Nofollow Link

A nofollow link is a link marked with the attribute rel="nofollow", which asks search engines not to count it as a recommendation. The opposite is an ordinary dofollow link, which passes authority, what some call link juice, on to the receiving page.

The attribute exists in three variants today. rel="nofollow" is the broad category for links a sender does not want to put its name behind, such as outbound links in press releases and partner overviews. rel="sponsored" marks paid and sponsored links, which Google's guidelines require to be declared. rel="ugc" covers user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. Google treats all three as hints rather than orders: a signal it almost always respects in practice, while reserving the right to judge the link itself.

A stubborn misconception is that nofollow on internal links can steer authority around a site, known as PageRank sculpting. It does not work. Nofollow links still consume their share of a page's link value, and the value simply disappears instead of being redistributed.

In link building many chase dofollow links exclusively, while a natural link profile holds both kinds. A nofollow link from a large publication may move no direct SEO value, and it still drives traffic, creates brand mentions and puts a company name into the text universe language models read when they assemble their answers.