Understanding Nofollow Backlinks: Do They Still Help SEO?

A nofollow backlink is a link that carries rel="nofollow" in its HTML, which tells search engines not to pass ranking credit to the page it points to. Understanding nofollow backlinks matters because Google has treated the tag as a hint rather than a command since 2019, and these links still deliver traffic, brand exposure, and a natural-looking link profile.

What a nofollow backlink is

Every link on the web is either followed or not. By default, a plain link passes ranking signals, often called link equity, from the linking page to the linked page. A nofollow backlink switches that off. The page still links to you, and people still click through, but the search engine is told not to count the link as an endorsement.

The tag in plain HTML

The whole mechanism is one attribute inside the link tag:

<a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">Visit site</a>

That rel="nofollow" part is the entire signal. Remove it and the same link becomes a standard dofollow link. Readers see no difference on the page. The tag lives only in the source code, which is why most site owners never notice which kind of links they have.

Why Google created it in 2005

Google introduced the nofollow attribute in 2005, mainly to fight link spam. Blog comments and forums were being flooded with junk links, because every link counted toward rankings. Nofollow gave publishers a way to keep comments open without handing out ranking credit to anyone who typed a URL into a form. Google documents its link attributes and spam policies at Google Search Central, which remains the source of truth for how links are treated.

How nofollow backlinks work

When a crawler reads a page, it parses each link and checks the rel attribute. No attribute means the link passes authority freely. With nofollow present, that flow is stopped or sharply limited. Before Google's 2019 update, the rule was absolute: nofollow links were ignored for ranking purposes entirely.

Since September 2019, Google has treated nofollow as a hint. That means Google may choose to consider a nofollow link when it believes the link is a genuine editorial signal, though there is no guarantee it will. The practical effect for you: a nofollow backlink is no longer a guaranteed zero. It is a maybe, weighted heavily toward "not counted."

Crawling changed too. Google may still discover and crawl a nofollow-linked page, or it may not. If you need a page kept out of the index, use a robots meta tag, not a nofollow link. The two solve different problems.

Understanding nofollow vs dofollow backlinks

The difference comes down to one question: does the link pass ranking credit? Dofollow links do. Nofollow links generally do not. Everything else about them, the clickable text, the destination, the traffic they send, works the same way.

Feature	Dofollow link	Nofollow link	Why it matters to you
Ranking credit	A dofollow link passes authority to the linked page	A nofollow link passes little or none	Dofollow links are the ones that directly move rankings
Default state	Dofollow is the default; a plain link with no rel attribute is dofollow	Nofollow must be added deliberately in the HTML	Most editorial links you earn naturally are dofollow
Google's treatment	Counted as a ranking signal	Treated as a hint since September 2019, usually not counted	Neither tag is invisible to Google; both are read
Typical home	Editorial mentions in articles and resource pages	Comments, forums, social profiles, paid placements	Where a link lives usually predicts which tag it carries
Risk profile	Buying dofollow links violates Google's spam policies	Correctly tagged paid links carry no penalty risk	The tag exists partly to keep paid promotion honest

Technically, "dofollow" is not a real attribute. There is no rel="dofollow" tag; the term just distinguishes ordinary links from nofollow ones. If you want the full picture of how followed links pass value, and how to spot the link-selling scams built around them, read our guide to what a dofollow backlink is and which offers are scams.

Neither type is "better" in isolation. Dofollow links carry more direct ranking weight, but a profile that is 100 percent dofollow looks manufactured. Real businesses get mentioned on social platforms, forums, and news sites, and those mentions are mostly nofollow. The mix is the natural state.

The three link attributes since 2019

The September 2019 update did more than soften nofollow into a hint. It split the job into three attributes, so publishers could tell Google why a link is qualified, not just that it is. Google announced the change on the Google Search Central Blog, and its spam policies in Google Search Essentials still require paid links to be marked.

Attribute	Introduced	Use it for	How Google treats it
rel="nofollow"	2005	Any link you do not want to endorse	A hint; usually no ranking credit passes
rel="sponsored"	2019	Paid links, sponsorships, and affiliate links	Like nofollow; it also prevents ranking manipulation through paid placement
rel="ugc"	2019	User-generated content such as comments and forum posts	Like nofollow, with added context about where the link came from

You can combine them, for example rel="nofollow sponsored", and older sites that never adopted the new tags are fine: plain nofollow still covers every case. What you should not do is mark a paid link as a plain followed link. That is the specific behavior Google's spam policies target, and it is the one link-tagging mistake with real penalty risk on both sides of the deal.

Do nofollow backlinks help SEO?

Nofollow backlinks do not directly raise your rankings, but they help your SEO in four indirect ways: they send referral traffic, they build the brand exposure that earns future dofollow links, they keep your backlink profile looking natural, and they let you appear in paid or user-generated placements without penalty risk.

Referral traffic that ignores the tag

A visitor clicking a link does not know or care what its rel attribute says. A nofollow link from a high-traffic page can send a steady stream of readers to your site. SEO practitioners regularly report that a single well-placed answer on a busy Reddit or Quora thread outperforms dozens of low-quality dofollow links in actual visits. Traffic is the point of ranking in the first place, so a link that delivers it has done most of the job already.

Exposure that turns into dofollow links

Large publishers commonly apply nofollow to outbound links as blanket policy; Forbes is the example cited most often. A nofollow mention there still puts your brand in front of a large audience. Some of those readers run their own sites, and when one of them links to you from a blog post, that second-generation link is usually dofollow. The nofollow link did not pass authority itself, but it started the chain that did.

A backlink profile that looks earned

Search engines expect a natural mix. Social shares, forum mentions, comments, and news citations are overwhelmingly nofollow, so a site with real visibility always carries plenty of them. A profile that is almost entirely dofollow suggests the links were built rather than earned, which invites closer scrutiny. In that sense, your nofollow links quietly vouch for your dofollow ones.

Protection when money changes hands

Any link given in exchange for value, whether cash, product, or services, must be tagged sponsored or nofollow under Google's spam policies. That makes nofollow the safe container for sponsorships, affiliate deals, and paid coverage. You get the audience and the traffic, Google gets an honest label, and neither site risks a manual action. This fits inside a wider principle worth internalizing: sustainable tactics beat shortcuts, which is the through-line of our rundown of SEO best practices that still work.

Where nofollow backlinks come from

Most nofollow links are created automatically by the platform hosting them. You rarely choose the tag; the venue chooses it for you.

Source	Usual attribute	Ranking credit	What the link is actually worth
Social media profiles and posts	Nofollow on nearly all major platforms	None	Traffic, brand visibility, and content discovery
Blog comments	Nofollow or ugc	None	Visibility with an engaged niche audience, if the comment adds something
Forums such as Reddit and Quora	Nofollow or ugc	None	Referral traffic that can be substantial on popular threads
YouTube video descriptions	Nofollow	None	A steady visitor stream from any video that keeps getting views
Wikipedia citations	Nofollow on every external link	None	Long-term traffic plus a credibility signal readers trust
Press releases	Usually nofollow	None	Brand exposure and journalist attention that can produce dofollow coverage
Sponsored and affiliate placements	sponsored or nofollow, by policy	None	Audience reach with zero penalty risk when tagged correctly

Read the pattern in that table: the tag strips the ranking credit, not the audience. Every source listed can put real people in front of your pages this week.

How to check whether a backlink is nofollow

You can check any single link by hand in under a minute, free, in any browser:

1. Open the page and right-click the link you want to check.
2. Choose "Inspect" to open the developer console on the link's HTML.
3. Look at the rel attribute. If it contains nofollow, sponsored, or ugc, the link passes little or no authority. If there is no rel attribute, it is a standard dofollow link.

Browser extensions that highlight nofollow links on the page make this faster if you check links often.

Checking one link yourself is easy. Auditing a whole profile is not, because a site of any age has hundreds or thousands of backlinks. At that scale you need a backlink tool that breaks your profile down by attribute, shows the follow-to-nofollow split, and lets you filter for sponsored or UGC links. If tool dashboards tend to lose you, our plain-English guide to SEO analytics tools explains what each report is actually telling you and which numbers deserve attention.

Using nofollow correctly on your own site

The attribute is not only something other sites apply to you. You control it on every outbound link you publish, and there are right and wrong ways to use that control.

Use nofollow, or its 2019 siblings, when:

• You are paid for the link. Sponsorships, affiliate links, and any exchange of value get rel="sponsored".
• Users create the link. Comments and forum posts on your site get rel="ugc" so spammers gain nothing by targeting you.
• You cannot vouch for the destination. Citing a low-quality source, or a site you would rather not endorse, is a fair use of plain nofollow.

Avoid two common mistakes:

• Do not nofollow your internal links. Sculpting how authority flows inside your own site by nofollowing internal links stopped working years ago, and it interferes with how your pages share value. If you want a page out of the index, use a robots meta tag instead.
• Do not blanket-nofollow every external link. Linking out to good sources is normal editorial behavior. A site that refuses to endorse anything looks odd, and it gains nothing by hoarding.

How to earn nofollow backlinks worth having

Chasing nofollow links for their own sake misses the point. Chase the audiences, and take the tags those venues assign:

• Answer real questions on Quora and Reddit where your content genuinely resolves the thread. One helpful answer on a high-traffic question can send visitors for years.
• Pitch journalists and niche bloggers. Coverage often starts nofollow and produces dofollow follow-on links from writers who found you through it.
• List your business in trusted directories that real customers actually use.
• Comment where your expertise adds something, on posts your prospects already read. A name people keep seeing becomes a brand people search for.

The same outreach that earns dofollow coverage earns nofollow mentions along the way, so run one pipeline, not two. If you are scaling that work, see how to automate backlink outreach without killing replies, because the fastest way to earn zero links of either kind is templated email that reads like a bot wrote it.

Myths about nofollow backlinks

"Nofollow links are useless." False. They carry traffic, exposure, and profile diversity, and since 2019 Google may count some as hints. Useless is the wrong word for a link real customers click.

"Nofollow links can hurt your site." A nofollow link from a normal site cannot hurt you. The tag limits what passes; it does not transmit anything negative. Some of the most authoritative publishers on the web use nofollow for every outbound link, and being cited by them is a good day.

"You should remove or disavow nofollow links." Removing them would make your profile look less natural, not more. A healthy profile always contains a large share of nofollow links, because that is what real visibility produces.

"A dofollow link is always better." Only if the source is comparable. A nofollow mention on a busy, trusted publication beats a dofollow link from a link farm every time, because one sends customers and the other sends risk.

FAQs

What does nofollow mean on a backlink?

It means the link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking authority to the linked page. The link still works normally for readers; it just is not counted as an endorsement.

Can nofollow backlinks help my site rank?

Not directly. They help indirectly by sending referral traffic, building the exposure that earns future dofollow links, and keeping your backlink profile looking natural. Since Google's September 2019 update, some may also be considered as ranking hints.

Should I remove or disavow nofollow backlinks?

No. A mix of nofollow and dofollow links is what an organic profile looks like, and stripping nofollow links out makes the remainder look manufactured. Disavow is for genuinely toxic links, not for a tag.

What is the difference between rel="nofollow", rel="ugc", and rel="sponsored"?

All three limit authority transfer. nofollow is the general-purpose version from 2005. ugc, added in 2019, marks user-generated content such as comments. sponsored, also from 2019, marks paid and affiliate links, and using it on paid placements is what Google's spam policies require.

Are nofollow links from Wikipedia or Reddit worth getting?

Yes, when they arise naturally. Wikipedia marks every external link nofollow, yet a citation there brings durable traffic and credibility. A relevant Reddit answer can send more visitors than many dofollow links ever will. Judge the audience, not the attribute.

Talk to the team

Pull up your own backlink profile this week and look at the follow-to-nofollow split before you spend another dollar on link building, because understanding nofollow backlinks only pays off once you know what your site actually has. If you want a second pair of eyes on it, talk to the team, and start by walking through a sample SEO report to see exactly how we break a link profile down.

Resources / References

1. Google Search Central
2. Google Search Central Blog
3. Google Search Essentials

Sources

• Can someone explain to me like I'm 5 how NOFOLLOW ...
• The Role of Nofollow Links in SEO
• What Is a Nofollow Backlink? Complete Guide
• Nofollow Links vs. Follow Links: All You Need to Know
• Expert Advice: Dofollow and Nofollow Link Attributes