Dofollow vs Nofollow Links: What’s the Real Difference?

The difference between dofollow and nofollow links is one attribute in the code. A “dofollow” link is simply a normal link with no rel label, which Google may crawl and count as a vote for the page it points to. A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", and its two newer cousins, rel="sponsored" (for paid links) and rel="ugc" (for comments and forum posts), tell Google the link isn’t a plain editorial endorsement. Since 2019 Google treats all three as hints rather than strict commands, and a paid link must carry sponsored or nofollow to stay inside Google’s spam policy.

Last updated 30 October 2026.

There is no “dofollow” tag

Here’s the thing most people miss. You won’t find rel="dofollow" in Google’s documentation, because it doesn’t exist as an instruction. “Dofollow” is an SEO nickname for the default state of a link.

Google’s page on qualifying outbound links says it directly: “For regular links that you expect Google to fetch and parse without any qualifications, you don’t need to add a rel attribute.” So a link like <a href="https://example.com/"> is the “dofollow” link people talk about. Nothing is added. Nothing needs to be.

A nofollow link looks like this instead: <a rel="nofollow" href="https://example.com/">. The only change is the label. The reader sees the same blue text and can click it the same way. The difference sits in the code, and it’s aimed at search engines, not people.

That matters for one reason. When a vendor or a site owner sells you a “dofollow link,” they’re selling a link with no label on it. Turns out that’s exactly the thing Google’s policy asks paid links not to be. We’ll come back to that.

The three rel values Google reads

Google recognises three values for the rel attribute on links, and it defines each one on the same page. Here’s how they’re worded today.

A few details from the same page are worth knowing. You can combine values: Google gives rel="ugc nofollow" as an example, and says multiple values can be “a space- or comma-separated list.” For paid links, nofollow “was previously recommended for these types of links and is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred.” And on crawling, it says “Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed,” but the linked pages “may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites.”

Sponsored and ugc attributes: why they were added

For years nofollow was the only label. It was introduced in 2005 to fight comment spam and then became the standard way to mark ads. On 10 September 2019 Google announced the two new values in a post called Evolving “nofollow”, written by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes.

The post describes sponsored as the value for “links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.” It describes nofollow as the value “where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.”

The bigger change was in how Google treats all three. Before, a nofollow link was simply not counted. The post says: “This has now changed.” All three attributes, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, “are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search.” Google’s reason was that links carry useful information, such as the words used in anchor text, and that seeing all links “can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns.” The hint model took effect for ranking straight away, and “For crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020.”

In practice, though, the same post says the hint model “won’t change the nature of how we treat such links” in most cases: Google will “generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes.” So don’t read “hint” as “secretly counts.” Read it as “Google keeps the right to decide.”

Honestly, if you’ve ever worried that you had to rewrite every old nofollow tag after 2019, you didn’t. The FAQ in that post answers it plainly: “There’s absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have.”

Who decides which label a link gets

The site that publishes the link decides. Not the site being linked to, and not the person who asked for the link.

That sounds obvious, but it’s where a lot of confusion starts. When you write a guest post for a travel blog, the travel blog’s editor controls the HTML. They can leave your link plain, add nofollow, or add sponsored. A blog’s CMS might add ugc to every comment link automatically. Some sites mark every outbound link nofollow by default, which Google’s link best practices page advises against: “Use nofollow only when you don’t trust the source, and not for every external link on your site.”

There’s also a page-wide version. A robots meta tag can carry nofollow for every link on a page. Google’s robots meta tag reference defines it as “Do not follow the links on this page.” So a link can look plain in its own <a> tag and still be covered by a nofollow rule in the page’s <head>.

Link marketplaces show the label up front for exactly this reason. Our Collaborator review notes that its catalog filter covers link type, with dofollow, nofollow and sponsored as options. Our Adsy review notes that Adsy’s FAQ tells buyers to check “the presence of link tags (nofollow/dofollow)” and the robots meta tag before approving an order. Don’t forget that check. A label promised on a listing is not the same as a label on the live page.

A worked example: one plumbing firm’s 40 links

Numbers make this easier to picture. Say a small plumbing firm in Leeds looks at its backlinks in Search Console and an SEO tool, and finds 40 links from other sites. Here’s how they might break down.

• 22 plain links. A local news story about a burst main, a supplier’s “trusted installers” page, two home-improvement blogs that cited its guide on bleeding radiators, and so on. No rel value. These are the “dofollow” links, and they’re the ones Google can treat as editorial votes.
• 9 nofollow links. Mostly from a large directory and a Q&A site that nofollows all outbound links by default. Google may use them as hints, but generally won’t count them for ranking.
• 6 ugc links. The owner answered questions in two DIY forums and left helpful replies in blog comments. The forum software marks those links ugc automatically.
• 3 sponsored links. The firm paid for a featured listing on a regional trades site and sponsored a post on a local parenting blog about winter boiler checks. Both publishers marked the links sponsored.

Now compare what each group does for the business. The 22 plain links are the ones that may help with rankings over time. The 3 sponsored links probably pass no ranking credit, but if the parenting blog post sends 150 local readers in a month and five of them book a boiler service, the firm earned its money back in customers, not in rankings. The 9 nofollow and 6 ugc links bring a trickle of visits and show the firm exists in its community.

Here’s the part that’s easy to get wrong. If the firm had asked the parenting blog to remove the sponsored label so the link “counted,” it would have turned an allowed advertisement into a link Google’s spam policy lists as link spam. Same post, same readers, very different risk.

What Google’s spam policy says about paid links

Google’s spam policies define link spam as “the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.” The first example on the list is “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes,” which includes “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links” and “Exchanging goods or services for links.”

The same section is clear that paid links themselves are normal. Its wording: “Google does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes. It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute value to the <a> tag.”

The 2019 post makes the same point in its FAQ. Asked whether ad or sponsored links still need flagging, Google answers “Yes,” and adds “We prefer the use of sponsored, but either is fine and will be treated the same, for this purpose.” It also says there’s “no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links.” Mark a comment link as sponsored by mistake and the worst outcome is that it doesn’t pass credit. Leave a paid link unmarked and you’re outside the policy.

Google’s July 2021 post, A reminder on qualifying links, applies this to guest posting. When Google detects sites “publishing or acquiring links with excessive sponsored and guest posting without proper link tags, algorithmic and manual actions may be applied.” It asks affiliate sites to use rel="sponsored" on affiliate links too. If you’re weighing a paid placement, our guide on whether you should buy backlinks covers the risk side in more depth.

How to check any link yourself

You don’t need a paid tool to see a link’s label. It takes about a minute.

1. Open the page where the link sits, in Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
2. Right-click the link and choose Inspect. The developer panel opens with the <a> tag highlighted.
3. Read the rel value. No rel at all means a plain link. Look for nofollow, sponsored or ugc, alone or combined.
4. Check the page head. Press Ctrl+U (or Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the source, then search for name="robots". A nofollow there applies to every link on the page.
5. Check again later. Labels can change after publication. When you’ve paid for a placement, look at the live code on the day it goes up and again a few weeks later.

Browser extensions that highlight nofollow links can speed this up, but they read the same code you just read.

Common mistakes with link attributes

Thinking “dofollow” is a tag you add. It isn’t. Writing rel="dofollow" does nothing useful; Google doesn’t list it as a value.

Nofollowing every outbound link. Google’s link best practices page says to use nofollow “only when you don’t trust the source.” If you’ve linked to a source you’re quoting, leave the link plain.

Asking publishers to strip the sponsored label. That’s the one change that moves a paid link from allowed to link spam. Skip the request.

Treating nofollow as worthless. A nofollow link from a busy forum or a well-read article can send real visitors. It just isn’t a ranking vote.

Using nofollow to hide a page from Google. The 2019 post warns that people relying on nofollow “solely to block a page from being indexed (which was never recommended)” should use a proper method instead. Google’s qualify-links page points to the noindex rule for that.

Forgetting affiliate links. If you’ve got affiliate links on your own site, Google’s 2021 post asks you to mark them rel="sponsored", “regardless of whether these links were created manually or dynamically.”

For the bigger picture on how links fit into SEO at all, see our guide to what link building is.

FAQ: dofollow and nofollow questions

Is a dofollow link better than a nofollow link?

For rankings, usually yes: a plain editorial link can count as a vote, while Google generally doesn’t use nofollow links for ranking. For traffic and brand, the label doesn’t matter at all, because readers click both the same way. The right question is whether the link was earned or paid for.

Does Google ever follow nofollow links?

It can. Since 1 March 2020 nofollow has been a hint for crawling and indexing, not a strict block. Google’s qualify-links page says such links “will generally not be followed,” and the target page may still be found through sitemaps or other links.

What’s the difference between sponsored and nofollow?

Sponsored says “this link was paid for”; nofollow says “I don’t vouch for this link” when no other value fits. For paid links, Google accepts either one, but says sponsored is preferred.

Do I need to change old nofollow tags to sponsored?

No. Google’s 2019 FAQ says there’s “absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have,” including nofollow on ads. It recommends switching to sponsored “if or when it is convenient.”

The short version

• “Dofollow” just means a normal link with no rel label; there’s no dofollow tag.
• nofollow, sponsored and ugc are labels the linking site adds, and Google treats all three as hints.
• Paid links must carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" to stay inside Google’s spam policy.
• A nofollow or sponsored link can still bring readers and customers; it just usually isn’t a ranking vote.
• Check the live code yourself: the <a> tag’s rel value and the page’s robots meta tag.

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