Dofollow vs nofollow links
A nofollow link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking credit through it; a dofollow link is simply an ordinary link with no such attribute. 'Dofollow' is informal shorthand — there is no rel="dofollow".
Also called: nofollow, dofollow, rel=nofollow, sponsored link, ugc link
Google introduced nofollow in 2005 so publishers could link to something without endorsing it, and later added two more specific values: rel="sponsored" for paid or affiliate links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content like comments. Since 2019 Google has treated all three as hints rather than strict directives, meaning it may choose to consider such a link rather than ignoring it outright.
The practical implication is that the dofollow/nofollow distinction deserves less weight than link-building folklore gives it. A nofollow link from a publication your buyers read still sends qualified traffic, still puts your name in front of the right audience, and still often precedes an unattributed follow link elsewhere. Discarding an opportunity because the outlet nofollows its outbound links optimizes for a metric rather than a business.
The one place the attribute genuinely matters is on links you control. If you paid for a placement in any form, it should carry rel="sponsored" — not doing so is what turns a paid placement into a link-scheme violation.
Common questions
Are nofollow links worth pursuing?
Often yes. Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than an absolute instruction, and a nofollow link from a relevant publication still delivers referral traffic and visibility to the right audience. Judge the opportunity by the audience and the publication, not by the attribute.
Related terms
Backlink
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to yours. It is the same object as any hyperlink — 'backlink' simply names it from the perspective of the site being linked to.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it influences what that page is understood to be about.
Link equity
Link equity is the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. It is the modern, less-jocular name for what SEOs long called 'link juice', and it descends from PageRank, Google's original method of scoring pages by the links pointing at them.
Toxic backlink
A toxic backlink is a link from a site whose only apparent purpose is to manipulate search rankings — link farms, private blog networks, hacked pages, or directories with no editorial standard. The term is an SEO-industry label, not a Google classification.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
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