What Is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link carries an HTML attribute (rel=”nofollow”) that tells search engines not to pass ranking credit or endorsement through that particular link.
When to Use It
Nofollow is typically applied to links you can’t vouch for — user-generated content like blog comments and forum posts, paid or sponsored links (alongside or instead of the more specific rel=”sponsored” attribute), and any link where you don’t want to implicitly endorse the destination for search ranking purposes.
How It Differs from Dofollow
Dofollow is simply the absence of a nofollow (or similar) attribute — it’s the web’s default link behavior and does pass ranking value. Google has stated that nofollow, sponsored, and UGC attributes are now treated as “hints” rather than absolute directives, meaning Google may still choose to consider such links in some contexts, but they remain the standard way to signal a link you don’t want counted as a full endorsement.
