What is a Nofollow Link? And Do They Impact Rankings in 2025

In SEO, links are a fundamental driver of authority and rankings. Not all links are treated equally, however.

A “nofollow” link is a specific type of hyperlink that traditionally told search engines not to count that link as an endorsement.

However, in 2025, nofollows has changed over time and carry important implications for SEO strategy.

In this comprehensive guide, I’ll describe what nofollow links are, why they were introduced, how they function technically, and how they impact SEO.

I’ll also explore the historical evolution of the nofollow attribute, Google’s changing stance on it, opposing viewpoints about its value, and best practices for using nofollow links in your content and link-building strategies.

Definition and purpose

This attribute signals to search engine crawlers that the website is not vouching for the target page and does not want to pass along ranking credit or “link juice” to that target.

In other words, a nofollow link tells search engines: “Don’t consider this link as a vote of confidence for the referenced page.”

According to the formal definition by Google and industry leaders, adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink means

“the destination of that hyperlink should not be afforded any additional weight or ranking by search engines”.

When search engines like Google encounter a normal (followed) link, they typically crawl the linked page and consider the link as a signal in their ranking algorithms (for example, passing PageRank or anchor text relevance).

A nofollow link, by contrast, is marked to be ignored for ranking purposes. As Google’s own documentation explains,

“Use the nofollow value when other values don’t apply, and you’d rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site.” 

The linking site is telling search engines it is not endorsing the content it’s linking to (which can be important for untrusted or user-submitted links).

It’s important to note that “nofollow” does not hide a link from users. Users can still click and visit the URL normally. The attribute purely affects search engine behavior.

While SEO professionals often refer to normal links as “dofollow” links, there is actually no rel="dofollow". That term simply refers to a regular link without a nofollow attribute.

Nofollow is one of several possible rel attributes that qualify a link, alongside others like “sponsored” and “ugc”.

A brief history of the nofollow attribute

The nofollow attribute was introduced in early 2005 as a joint effort by Google, Yahoo, and MSN (now Bing) to combat the rampant problem of link spam, especially in blog comments and forums.

At the time, spammers were flooding user-generated content platforms with links to manipulate search rankings. Google’s then-head of web spam, Matt Cutts, and Blogger’s Jason Shellen helped create the nofollow tag as a solution to this single problem. 

As Google announced:

“When Google sees the attribute (rel=‘nofollow’) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.”

This means the linked site wouldn’t gain any PageRank or ranking advantage from such a link.

Originally, the primary use case was to thwart comment spam. Blogging platforms (like WordPress, Blogger, etc.) and other content management systems quickly adopted nofollow for user-submitted links.

For example, if a spammer left a comment saying “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site” with a link, adding nofollow ensured that Google would not count that link as a vote for the spammer’s site.

This did not penalize the site hosting the comment; it simply prevented spammers from benefiting. Search engines other than Google also honored the attribute – Yahoo and Microsoft’s search engine supported the initiative from the start, making nofollow an industry-wide standard for flagging untrusted links.

PageRank sculpting and algorithm changes

In the late 2000s, some SEOs began experimenting with using nofollow internally on their own sites to control PageRank flow, a practice known as “PageRank sculpting.”

The idea was to nofollow less important internal links (like login pages or certain navigation links) so that more PageRank would funnel to the pages that remained followed. Google eventually caught on to these tactics and adjusted their algorithm.

In 2009, Google’s Matt Cutts revealed that Google had changed how PageRank is distributed with nofollowed links. After the change, nofollow links still consume a share of PageRank, but that share simply doesn’t get passed on – it evaporates.

The remaining followed links do not get an extra boost. This meant that using nofollow to sculpt PageRank no longer provided an advantage; any PageRank going to a nofollowed link was just lost rather than reallocated.

As Cutts summarized in that 2009 post:

“The essential thing you need to know is that nofollow links don’t help sites rank higher in Google search results.” 

They pass no PageRank and no anchor text value, so you cannot channel more PageRank to other links by nofollowing some. This was a crucial nuance for SEO practitioners to understand and effectively put an end to the viability of PageRank sculpting via nofollow.

Over time, use of nofollow became commonplace across the web. At PubCon 2019 a Google representative Gary Illyes noted that

“More than half of the links on the web are now marked ‘nofollow.’'”

How to make a link nofollow

From a technical perspective, implementing a nofollow link is straightforward.

It’s worth noting that nofollow can also be used at the page level through a meta tag, though this is less common.

Add a meta robots directive like <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> in the HTML <head> of a page instructs search engines not to follow any outgoing links on that page.

This meta tag approach was used occasionally on pages with untrusted content or for websites that wanted a blanket rule.

From my experience, site owners typically prefer to apply rel="nofollow" on specific links rather than use a meta tag that affects all links on a page.

The meta tag is still recognized (and can be combined with “noindex” to both avoid indexing the page and not follow its links. Use cases for it are niche (for example, a page listing unmoderated user content might employ it).

How crawlers treat nofollow links

Historically, when a search engine crawler (like Googlebot) encountered a nofollow link, it would not follow that link to the target URL.

The link was effectively dropped out of the link graph that search engines use to evaluate site authority.

However, one must distinguish between not passing ranking credit and not being crawled at all.

In earlier years, Google typically would not even crawl the URL of a pure nofollow link (especially if it wasn’t discovered through any other means). That behavior has changed, as we’ll cover in the next section – Google may choose to crawl nofollow links in some cases now, treating the nofollow as a “hint.”

Let’s say you have a forum, and a user posts a link to an external website in their comment. You mark that link as nofollow (rel="ugc nofollow"). When Googlebot crawls your forum page:

• It sees the link to the external site but notes the rel="nofollow".

• For ranking purposes, Google will not count that link in boosting the external site’s authority. It’s as if you gave zero ranking votes to that site.

• Historically, Googlebot might not have even visited that external URL via this link, since it was told “nofollow.” But Google could still find that external page through other routes (like if it’s linked elsewhere).

• With modern Google (post-2019), Googlebot might still discover the URL from the link and choose to crawl it (especially if it hasn’t seen that URL elsewhere), but it would do so without attributing the link as an endorsement. Essentially, Google separates discovery from ranking – it may use nofollow links to find new content but still not give them ranking credit.

Using nofollows as a hint was a major shift: instead of blindly ignoring nofollow links, Google indicated it may choose to take them into account in some situations.

Why the change?

Google explained that links often contain valuable information.

Anchor text can describe a page’s content, and patterns of linking (even if nofollowed) can reveal useful data about a site’s relationships. By completely ignoring a large segment of links (nofollow), Google was potentially missing out on data that could improve search results or help detect link spam patterns.

As nofollow became extremely common, Google had more incentive to find insights from them. In Google’s own words:

“Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at... Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns.”

By shifting nofollow to a hint, Google could reserve the right to use that link data when appropriate, rather than categorically ignoring it.

Google emphasized that most users and webmasters did not need to change anything as a result of this policy update. They explicitly said:

“There’s absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have.”

How Bing is treating nofollows?

It’s worth mentioning that other search engines have historically handled nofollow in similar ways.

Bing, for example, treats nofollow links as a directive not to give ranking credit (though, like Google now, Bing might still use them for discovery).

So across the industry, nofollow has been respected as a mechanism to neutralize links. The “hint” approach is a Google-specific change; we don’t have explicit confirmation that Bing has the same stance, but Bing’s algorithms also likely ignore nofollowed links for ranking.

As SEO professionals, the focus is usually on Google’s behavior due to its market share, but it’s good to be aware that nofollow is an understood standard for all major engines in terms of not passing link equity.

When should you use nofollow on links?

Understanding when to apply nofollow is important for maintaining a healthy link profile.

Nofollow is essentially about trust and endorsement. Here are common scenarios and reasons to use nofollow:

• User-Generated Content (UGC): If your website allows users to create content or add links (comments, forum posts, guestbook entries, Q&A, etc.), those links should typically be nofollow (or tagged ugc). The reason is you, as the site owner, did not choose those links, and they may not be trustworthy. For example, blog comment sections are a classic case.

• Paid links, sponsorships, & advertising: Any link that is part of a paid arrangement must be nofollow or marked as sponsored under Google’s guidelines. This includes banner ads, text link ads, paid reviews, affiliate links, or sponsored guest posts. This usage of nofollow is about preventing manipulation of rankings via paid influence. However, in practice, link builders don't follow this guideline to maximize the link equity.

• Affiliate links: Affiliate links are a type of paid link (you earn a commission on referrals), so they fall under the same category.

• Untrusted or unvetted content: If you as a site owner want to link to a page but aren’t confident about its reliability, you might use nofollow. Some websites automatically nofollow all outbound links to avoid any risk.

• Widgets, guest posts, and other distributed content: If you provide a widget or badge that people can put on their sites (with a link back to your site), Google expects those links to be nofollowed.

• Press releases, publicly editable repositories: Links in press releases or wiki-like sites are often nofollowed. For example, Wikipedia nofollows all external links as a policy to avoid being a free link farm for SEO.

In summary, use nofollow when the link is not a genuine, editorial endorsement by you or when you don’t want to pass ranking credit for policy or trust reasons. A simpler rule: If in doubt about a link, nofollow it.

Do nofollow links influence ranking in 2025?

Now we arrive at the core question: Do nofollow links help or hurt your SEO, and how do they fit into your overall search strategy?

Officially, Google says they reserve the right to consider them, but they haven’t gone into specifics about when they will.

It’s likely that in the vast majority of cases, nofollow links still do not pass PageRank or anchor text value as stated by Google representatives.

However...

According to a recent survey, 89.1% of link builders think nofollow links matter for search rankings. This means that a clear majority of people who deal with links daily believe nofollow links carry ranking power.

Additionally, 62% of marketers report on nofollow link amounts, indicating that they hold some value either for ranking or organic traffic (direct traffic).

In practical terms, when planning an SEO campaign or link building effort, you should consider nofollow links as not contributing to your page’s ability to rank for competitive keywords.

For example, if all your backlinks are nofollow, you will likely struggle to rank, because from Google’s view you have essentially zero link authority.

Moz’s own research in years past indicated that high-ranking pages often had a healthy mixture of followed and nofollowed backlinks, with higher-ranking sites sometimes having a greater absolute number of nofollow links as part of their overall link portfolio (simply because they’re more talked about).

But those nofollow links weren’t directly boosting rank; instead, they were a side effect of popularity (e.g., a popular site gets many mentions everywhere, including places like Wikipedia or forums which are nofollow).

So, direct ranking impact: Nofollow links on their own do not raise your PageRank or search rankings in Google’s algorith. They are essentially neutral.

But that doesn’t mean they have no SEO benefit at all – the benefit can be indirect or long-term:

Other ways nofollow backlinks can be beneficial

Discovery and indexation

Nofollow links can help Google discover your site or new content. For a brand new website, initial links might only come from places like social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) which are usually nofollow.

Google can find your site through those and index it. While this doesn’t give you PageRank, getting indexed is a prerequisite to ranking.

Referral traffic and user behavior signals

Nofollow links can drive human visitors to your site. If a link on a popular forum or a Q&A site (like Quora) brings you significant traffic, that’s valuable in itself.

Those visitors might engage with your site, potentially share your content elsewhere, or even convert into customers.

Google also indirectly measures user traffic and behavior as part of its ranking algorithms according to the recent count documents that were revealed. If nofollow links bring a lot of real users who stay on your site (low bounce, etc.), that positive user interaction could indirectly support your SEO via engagement signals.

Natural link profile (Trust)

A completely natural backlink profile will contain a mix of dofollow and nofollow links.

If all your backlinks were dofollow, it might even look suspicious, because in the real world, any site that gets talked about will accumulate some nofollow links.

SEOs often talk about the “dofollow/nofollow ratio.” While there isn’t an exact ideal ratio, it’s naturally expected that some portion of your backlinks are nofollow.

In one study, 10.6% of all backlinks to the top 110,000 websites were nofollow. It’s a correlation that suggests nofollow links are a natural part of growing your site’s presence. A site with zero nofollow links might actually reveal an unnatural linking pattern.

Anchor text and context (possibly used as hint):

As Google hinted, one reason they switched nofollow to a hint is anchor text information. 

For instance, if 100 people on forums all link to a new site using the anchor text “Awesome New Product”, even if those links are nofollow, Google’s algorithms might pick up on that anchor text association.

They could infer that this new site is about “Awesome New Product” and even that it’s gaining popularity.

Historically Google wouldn’t have looked at that anchor text at all if the links were nofollow. Now, under the hint model, they might.

This could mean that in theory nofollow link anchor text could help Google understand what queries your page might be relevant for (without necessarily giving you link juice).

There’s no concrete, public example of this in action, but it’s a logical extension of what “hint” implies. Google’s own announcement mentioned “how the words within links describe content” as valuable info they don’t want to ignore entirely.

Should I use nofollow internal links?

For your own site’s internal linking, using nofollow on internal links is usually not advisable for SEO.

Internal links are how you distribute PageRank to your own pages, and marking them nofollow means you’re intentionally not passing value to those pages.

There are rare cases someone might think to nofollow an internal link (for instance, to a login page or a temporary page you don’t want indexed), but a better approach would be to use meta noindex on that target page or block it via robots.txt, rather than nofollowing internal links.

About 35.3% of websites had some internal nofollow links according to research done.

Ideally, that number should be near zero – experts agree there’s typically no good reason to nofollow links within your own site’s navigation structure.

Does it hurt rankings if I have all external links as nofollows?

For outbound links to other sites, nofollow can be a tool to conserve a bit of your site’s “link equity” in the sense that you’re not giving away PageRank to another site.

However, remember the cost: any PageRank that would have gone out through a nofollow link doesn’t get redistributed to your other outbound links; it’s just not counted at all.

Thus, while some webmasters nofollow every external link to try to “keep all the juice,” this strategy doesn’t actually boost your own rankings. It just means you’re not helping others.

A site linking out normally to relevant, authoritative resources can be seen as a positive for user experience and doesn’t inherently hurt that site’s rankings. So, you shouldn’t be nofollowing all external links simply to hoard PageRank as Google’s algorithm already accounts for natural linking behavior.

Influence on site trust and penalties

Nofollow links can also play a role in how search engines evaluate the trustworthiness of your site, particularly regarding outgoing links:

Google’s algorithms and manual reviewers assess whether sites engage in link schemes. If your site sells links or is full of spammy outbound links, that’s a trust killer. Using nofollow on such outbound links is essentially a must to avoid penalty.

Google even released a “Link Spam Update” in 2021 that algorithmically nullified link credit from sites that weren’t marking sponsored links appropriately. So, properly tagging paid links with nofollow/sponsored protects your site’s reputation in Google’s eyes. It tells Google: “I am not trying to manipulate rankings; I’m being transparent.”

Conversely, a site that never uses nofollow on user-generated or paid links might get into trouble.

For instance, if you run a popular forum and you let every user-posted link be followed, you’re likely to become a target for spammers and eventually search engines might distrust your site (or you could receive a manual action for “outgoing unnatural links”).

So judicious use of nofollow improves your site’s immunity to spam penalties.

Regarding incoming links (backlinks to you), if you have a bunch of spammy or low-quality sites linking to you with nofollow, you generally don’t have to worry – by definition they shouldn’t count.

Even Google’s disavow tool is mainly intended for bad followed links; nofollow backlinks are usually already ignored algorithmically.

So if a spammy forum is linking to your site but those links are nofollow, you can usually ignore them as they likely won’t affect your site (positive or negative).

One debated concept is whether having a pattern of only low-quality sites linking to you with nofollow could raise any flags. Generally, no – since nofollow links aren’t “supposed” to count, Google would just not credit you those and move on.

They won’t penalize you for who links to you if you had no control, especially if the links didn’t even pass value.

The main time nofollow comes into play with trust is in how you manage your own outbound links.

Best practices checklist for nofollow links

1. Always nofollow paid links: Use rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" for paid links (e.g., ads, affiliate links) to stay within Google’s guidelines and avoid penalties.

2. Nofollow UGC links: For user-submitted links (comments, forums, reviews), use rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc" to prevent spam and maintain content quality.

3. Avoid nofollow on internal links: Don’t use rel="nofollow" on internal links. If you want to block a page, use a meta noindex instead to ensure Google can crawl important pages.

4. Evaluate outbound links carefully: Only nofollow links you don’t trust or endorse. Editorial links to authoritative sources should be followed for user benefit.

5. Maintain a natural link profile: Don’t manipulate your nofollow ratio. A diverse mix of followed and nofollow links is typical for a strong, organic web presence.

6. Leverage nofollow for exposure: Nofollow links on high-visibility platforms (e.g., Q&A sites, guest posts) can still drive traffic and exposure, even without direct SEO benefit.

7. Monitor backlink profile: Keep an eye on nofollow vs. followed links using SEO tools. Excessive nofollow spam may require investigation but usually won’t harm SEO.

8. Nofollow doesn’t shield bad linking: Avoid linking to low-quality sites, even if nofollowed, as it can harm your site’s reputation.

9. Avoid nofollowing to hoard PageRank: Don’t nofollow all outbound links. A balance of followed and nofollow links contributes to a healthy web ecosystem and can improve SEO.

10. Stay updated on policies: Follow SEO news for updates on link attribute policies and potential changes in how nofollow links are treated by search engines.

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