Nofollow

What a nofollow link looks like in the code

By default, a link tells the search engine: “I trust this page, follow it there.” A nofollow link says the opposite. It asks the search engine not to pass on its own authority through the link. The entire difference lies in a single attribute in the HTML code.

An ordinary link, what’s called a dofollow link, looks like this:

<a href="https://example.com">Anchor text</a>

A nofollow link has a rel attribute with the value nofollow:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Anchor text</a>

Google later introduced two more precise variants that you’ll also come across in practice. They say more about why the link shouldn’t be followed:

<a href="..." rel="sponsored">Paid link or advertisement</a>
<a href="..." rel="ugc">User-generated content, for example a comment</a>

How to check a link yourself, without tools

You don’t need an SEO tool to see whether a link is nofollow. Your browser can do it all, and it takes a few seconds.

1. Right-click directly on the link you want to examine.
2. Select “Inspect”. The shortcut for developer tools is F12, and with Ctrl+Shift+C you can point directly at an element on the page.
3. Look at the highlighted <a> tag in the code. If it says rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc", the link isn’t followed. If there’s no rel attribute of that type, it’s an ordinary dofollow link.

Want to check an entire page at once? Open the source code with Ctrl+U and search with Ctrl+F for the word nofollow. That way you’ll see every occurrence at once, without clicking through each link.

When nofollow makes sense

Nofollow was born as a defence against spam in comment sections, and it’s still widely used today. Three situations come up again and again. On paid links and advertisements, where Google’s guidelines require the link to be marked as sponsored, or you risk a manual penalty. On user-generated links, such as comments and forum posts, where you can’t vouch for the destination yourself. And on links to pages you’re referencing but don’t want to endorse.

One important caveat. Since 2019, Google has treated nofollow as a hint rather than a strict order. The search engine can therefore choose to follow a nofollow link anyway if it judges that doing so makes sense. In practice, this means nofollow is a signal of intent, not a guaranteed block.

In short

A nofollow link passes on no authority and is marked with rel="nofollow" in the code. You find it by right-clicking and selecting Inspect. A healthy link profile has a natural mix of both types, because a website where every single inbound link is dofollow often looks more engineered than trustworthy.