Nofollow vs dofollow backlinks: what each passes

A dofollow backlink is an ordinary link with no rel value that tells Google to discount it, so it can pass ranking credit to your page; a nofollow backlink carries rel="nofollow", which Google treats as a hint not to use it for ranking. Both send visitors and help people and crawlers find you, and since Google's 2019 change, nofollow, sponsored and ugc are all hints rather than strict rules.

"Dofollow" is not an attribute you can add. It is shorthand for a link with none of the three qualifying values.

What is the difference between nofollow and dofollow links?

The difference is one attribute value. A followed link, <a href="https://yoursite.com">, is a normal editorial link that search engines may use as a ranking signal for the target. A nofollow link, <a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">, asks them not to. To a visitor the two look and behave identically.

MDN describes the original meaning: nofollow "indicates that the current document's original author or publisher does not endorse the referenced document." Google's own definition today is to use nofollow "when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site."

What does "dofollow" mean if it is not an attribute?

"Dofollow" means the link has no value telling search engines to discount it. There is no rel="dofollow" in HTML: MDN's list of rel keywords has nofollow but no dofollow, so writing it does nothing. A link is followed by default and becomes qualified only when you add nofollow, sponsored or ugc.

Other rel values do not change whether a link is followed. noopener controls how a new tab opens and noreferrer means "no Referer header will be included"; neither is a ranking hint. noreferrer does affect your analytics, though: visits through such a link arrive without a referrer, so they tend to be reported as direct traffic rather than as a referral from the linking site.

How does Google treat nofollow, sponsored and ugc now?

Google treats all three as hints. In September 2019 it announced: "All the link attributes, sponsored, ugc, and nofollow, are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search." They became hints for ranking immediately, and "for crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020."

What the three values mean, in Google's words:

• sponsored: "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value."
• ugc: recommended for "user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts."
• nofollow: for when "other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site."

You can combine them. Google calls rel="ugc sponsored" "a perfectly valid attribute," and says pairing nofollow with a newer value, as in rel="nofollow ugc", keeps compatibility with services that only read nofollow. Existing nofollow links need no changes: "You don't need to change any existing markup." Which value belongs on which kind of link is covered in rel=sponsored, ugc and nofollow.

Because they are hints, Google may still use a nofollow link to discover a page. That is the practical reason a nofollow listing can help a brand-new site get crawled sooner, even though it is not a dependable source of ranking credit.

Do paid links have to be nofollow?

Yes. A link you paid for, or got in exchange for goods, services or a free product, must carry sponsored or nofollow. Google's spam policy lists "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam, and it says paid links are fine "as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value."

Google prefers sponsored for these: nofollow "is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred." Its 2019 post also answers what happens if you pick the wrong value: "There's no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links." Marking a paid link as ugc or leaving it followed is the mistake that matters. Free products count as payment here: Google's policy lists "sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link" as an example of buying links.

This applies in both directions. If you sell a placement on your own site, qualify the link. If you buy one, expect it to be qualified, and be wary of any seller offering followed links for money, since that is exactly what the policy describes.

Should the links on your own site be nofollow?

Mostly no. Links between your own pages should be followed, because they are how Google finds and understands your site; Google's advice is that "every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site." Outbound links to sources you cite and trust can be followed too.

Qualify outbound links only where one of Google's cases applies:

• Advertising, sponsorships and any placement someone paid for: sponsored.
• Comments, forum posts, reviews and profiles written by your users: ugc, which can sit alongside nofollow.
• A link you need to include but would rather not vouch for: nofollow.

Google's link guidance recommends nofollow only for sources you distrust, not as a default on every outbound link. A blanket nofollow on every outbound link is not something Google asks for.

Are nofollow backlinks still worth getting?

Yes, for what they reliably do. A nofollow link on a page people read sends visitors, puts your name in front of buyers, and gives crawlers a path to your site. For a new site, a nofollow listing on an indexed, busy platform can matter more than a followed link on a page nobody visits.

What each kind of link does for you:

Judge a link opportunity on the page it sits on first: is it indexed, is it read, is it relevant. The attribute is a second question. The full picture of which sources to pursue first is in how to get backlinks for a new website.

How do you check whether a link is nofollow or dofollow?

Read the link's rel attribute in the page's HTML. View the source (not the live DOM) first, because the source shows what the server sent; then inspect the element in DevTools to see whether JavaScript added a value after load. If rel contains nofollow, sponsored or ugc, the link is qualified.

1. Open the page that links to you and press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the source.
2. Search the source for your domain.
3. Read the rel attribute on each <a> that points to you. rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored", rel="ugc" or any combination means qualified. No rel, or only noopener, noreferrer or external, means followed.
4. Right-click the link on the page, choose Inspect, and compare. A value present in DevTools but not in the source was added by JavaScript.
5. Check the page's own robots directives too. A page-level <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> or an X-Robots-Tag: nofollow header applies to every link on the page.

From the command line, one pipeline lists every link to your site with its attributes:

curl -s https://example.com/page-that-links-to-you \
  | grep -o '<a [^>]*href="https\?://\(www\.\)\?yoursite\.com[^"]*"[^>]*>'

Browser extensions that highlight nofollow links read the same attribute from the live page, which includes anything JavaScript changed after load. They are handy for skimming a page, but confirm the links that matter in the source.

Also confirm the link is crawlable at all. Google says it "can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element with an href attribute," so a button that navigates with onclick passes nothing, followed or not.

Search Console will not do this for you: its Links report "doesn't specify if a link is marked as nofollow." Launch platforms differ widely on this attribute, and some make the followed link conditional; the launch platforms that give a dofollow backlink compares their terms.

Earn a followed link by passing the scan

LaunchScaler's free listing works on this exact line. A URL is the only thing it asks for, and the listing earns one dofollow backlink to your site once the site passes the readiness scan, so the followed link is tied to the site's quality rather than to payment. The scan is free, needs no account, and runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories (search, AI visibility, security, compliance, speed and visual, and whether the site works). Run the free scan to see where your site stands before you list it.