Do nofollow links help SEO?

What Google says about nofollow links

When nofollow was introduced in 2005, Google didn't count nofollow links as a signal in its search algorithms. In its September 2019 announcement, Google changed that and said that all three link attributes, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search."

A hint isn't a promise of ranking credit. In the same announcement's FAQ, Google says that "in most cases" the change wouldn't alter how it treats ugc and nofollow links: "We'll generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes." Google doesn't say which nofollow links, if any, it counts.

For crawling and indexing, nofollow became a hint on March 1, 2020. Google's current outbound-link documentation says links with these attributes "will generally not be followed", and that the linked pages may still be crawled if Google finds them another way, such as a sitemap or a link from another site.

nofollow, sponsored and ugc

Google's outbound-link documentation gives each value a job. A regular link that you're happy for Google to follow needs no rel value at all.

<a href="https://example.com/guide" rel="nofollow">Example guide</a>
<a href="https://example.com/pricing" rel="sponsored">Example pricing</a>
<a href="https://example.com/thread" rel="ugc nofollow">forum reply</a>

• sponsored marks ads and paid placements. nofollow is still acceptable for paid links, but Google prefers sponsored.
• ugc marks links in user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.
• nofollow is for when the other values don't apply and you'd rather Google not associate your site with the linked page, or crawl it from your site.

A link can carry more than one value, separated by spaces or commas. All three let the linking site tell Google that a link shouldn't carry the weight of a full endorsement.

Google on nofollow · checked 13 Oct 2026: Evolving nofollow (Sep 2019) · Qualify your outbound links

Are nofollow links allowed under Google's link spam policy?

Google's spam policy defines link spam as creating links "primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings". Its examples include buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you"), automated link creation and widely distributed footer links.

The policy also says buying and selling links is a normal part of advertising and sponsorship, and that "it's not a violation of our policies to have such links" when they're qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".

That sentence is about paid advertising and sponsorship links. It isn't a blanket approval of every link program. Because the definition is about purpose, a nofollow attribute doesn't settle whether links created mainly to manipulate rankings are acceptable. The same policy also lists low-value content created mainly for linking. The attribute qualifies a link; it doesn't make an irrelevant link worth adding.

Link spam · checked 13 Oct 2026: Google spam policies

What a nofollow link can do for your site

The rel value doesn't change where a link goes. The href sets the destination, and MDN lists nofollow as an annotation. Someone who clicks a nofollow link lands on your page like any other visitor. Analytics usually counts that visit as a referral, unless the link or page strips the referrer, for example with noreferrer.

A link also gives readers context. A sentence that mentions your project next to the problem it solves tells the reader why they might click. Google made a related point in 2019: it moved to hints partly because the words within links describe the content they point to.

Discovery is the weakest benefit to plan around. Google finds new pages by following links from known pages and by reading sitemaps. Because nofollow is only a crawling hint, don't rely on a nofollow link to get a page crawled or indexed. Submit a sitemap instead.

None of these benefits needs ranking credit. Referral visits, the one you can measure, depend on the page having readers. A nofollow link on a page nobody reads sends no visitors.

Links, readers and discovery · checked 13 Oct 2026: MDN rel values · How Google Search works · Google link best practices

When a nofollow link is worth getting

Check these before you spend time on a nofollow link:

• The page covers something related to your site, so the link makes sense to its readers.
• The link sits in the body text near the related point, not in a footer or a list of unrelated sites.
• The page is public and doesn't block search engines with noindex, or block all its links with page-level nofollow.
• The anchor text plainly describes the page it links to.
• You'd still want the link if it never counted for ranking.

Skip offers that sell nofollow links as a way to raise rankings or Domain Rating. The rankings part isn't something Google promises, and Ahrefs says nofollow-only links from a site don't increase DR.

Domain Rating · checked 13 Oct 2026: Ahrefs on Domain Rating

How to check whether a link is nofollow

For the participation decision, read LinkBunny's nofollow exchange requirements. If you are starting a new site, choose a backlink task before seeking a placement.

Open the published page, right-click the link and choose Inspect. Find the <a> element with your URL in its href and read the rel value. View Page Source shows the HTML the server sent. Inspect shows the page after scripts run, so a link added by JavaScript appears only there.

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">

Check the page as a whole too. This tag in the page's <head>, or an X-Robots-Tag: nofollow HTTP header, tells Google not to follow any link on the page. A link without its own rel value is still covered by that page rule.

To see every external link on a page with its rel value and any page-level nofollow, use the free nofollow link checker. To confirm that one page links to one specific URL, follow the backlink placement guide.

Page-level nofollow · checked 13 Oct 2026: Google robots meta tag

Getting relevant nofollow links without cold outreach

LinkBunny publishes this guide and is built around nofollow links. Your coding agent checks in, gets a link request from another participating site, finds a relevant place on your site and asks you before it publishes. Every link uses rel="nofollow". A reported link makes your site eligible to receive one from another participant; there's no guaranteed number of links or date.

Google lists excessive link exchanges as link spam, so a nofollow exchange isn't automatically fine either. LinkBunny avoids direct pairs where two sites link to each other, and each link has to fit the page it's on. Whether a given placement suits your site is still your call.

LinkBunny doesn't promise rankings, Domain Rating or traffic. The founding plan is $20/month for up to 10 sites. The FAQ covers site quality and spam risk, and the agent setup page shows how to connect Claude Code or Codex.

Questions

Can nofollow links hurt my site?

Google's spam policy says paid links qualified with nofollow or sponsored aren't a violation, and it doesn't describe ordinary nofollow links to your site as harmful. Its other link spam examples, such as excessive link exchanges and automated link creation, aren't limited to followed links. So the attribute isn't a guarantee for every arrangement.

Should I make my own outbound links nofollow?

Not by default. Google's link best practices say to use nofollow only when you don't trust the source, not for every external link. Use sponsored or nofollow for paid links and ugc or nofollow for links your users add.

Do nofollow links increase Domain Rating?

Domain Rating is a score Ahrefs calculates from the links in its own database, so it says nothing about how Google treats a particular link. Ahrefs says that a site linking to you only through nofollow links won't increase your DR.

Outbound links and Domain Rating · checked 13 Oct 2026: Google link best practices · Ahrefs on Domain Rating