Dofollow vs Nofollow Links

Marketers often say “dofollow” to mean a normal link without a qualifying rel value such as nofollow. Modern link attributes provide search engines with additional context about why a link exists.

Key points

• Standard links
• rel=nofollow
• rel=sponsored
• rel=ugc
• Referral value can exist regardless
• Context still matters

Use several signals together

A strong evaluation combines relevance, editorial quality, visibility, placement context and the purpose of the link.

Inspect the real page

Third-party metrics summarize aspects of a site; they cannot replace looking at the page where the link will appear.

Apply the same checks when buying

Marketplace listings are starting points. The underlying publisher should still pass the same quality review.

Related guides