What Value Do Nofollow Links Have in SEO?

Nofollow links get dismissed as worthless. They are not. They do not pass ranking credit the way a normal link does, but they still bring visitors, still make a link profile look natural, and still put your name in front of people. What has changed is that Google now treats nofollow as a hint rather than an order, and a whole new set of AI crawlers has arrived that ignores the attribute entirely.

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Key Takeaways

• A nofollow link does not pass ranking credit, but Google is free to follow it anyway.
• Nofollow links still drive referral traffic, and traffic is the point of a website.
• A nofollow mention often turns into a followed link later, once someone finds you through it.
• A backlink profile with no nofollow links at all looks unnatural.
• Nofollow does nothing to control AI crawlers. Only robots.txt does.

Understanding Nofollow Links

A nofollow link is an ordinary link with rel="nofollow" added to it. The attribute tells search engines you do not want to vouch for the page you are linking to. It was introduced in 2005 to fight comment spam, and for years it worked as a hard instruction.

Nofollow Link Attributes

On 10 September 2019 Google split the single nofollow attribute into three, so you can say why a link is not endorsed rather than just that it is not. There are now three values:

• rel="sponsored" — for paid links and advertising. Google now prefers this over nofollow for anything you were paid to place.
• rel="ugc" — for user-generated content: blog comments, forum posts, profile links. Google suggests you can remove it for contributors who prove themselves trustworthy.
• rel="nofollow" — the catch-all, for when the other two do not fit and you simply do not want to be associated with the page.

You can combine them, for example rel="sponsored nofollow". Google’s own wording is that links carrying these attributes “will generally not be followed”, while noting the target page may still be crawled through a sitemap or a link somewhere else.

SEO Impact of Nofollow

Here is the part most articles still get wrong. Nofollow is no longer an instruction Google must obey.

• From the September 2019 announcement, all three attributes became hints for ranking purposes. Google decides whether to use the link as a signal.
• From 1 March 2020, nofollow became a hint for crawling and indexing too. Google may follow a nofollow link if it wants to.

What this means in practice: you cannot use nofollow to keep a page out of Google. It was never designed for that and since 2020 it does not work for it. If you need a page kept out of the index, use a noindex meta tag. If you need it not crawled, use robots.txt.

Google has never published how often it chooses to follow a nofollow link, so treat any article giving you a percentage on that with suspicion. What we can say honestly is that the attribute is a request, not a wall.

How LLMs and AI Crawlers Handle Nofollow Links

This is the part that did not exist when this article was first written, and it matters more every month. Nofollow has no effect on AI crawlers at all. It is a search-ranking signal. AI systems do not use it.

What actually controls AI crawlers

Every major AI operator documents one control mechanism, and it is robots.txt. None of them mention link attributes. OpenAI, for example, runs several separate bots you can allow or block independently:

• GPTBot — collects content for training foundation models. Blocking it says your content should not be used for training.
• OAI-SearchBot — powers ChatGPT’s search. Block this one and you disappear from ChatGPT’s results.
• ChatGPT-User — fires when a person asks ChatGPT to fetch a page. Because it is user-initiated, robots.txt rules may not apply to it.

Google splits things the same way. Google-Extended controls whether your content trains Gemini and grounds its answers. Google states plainly that Google-Extended “does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal”. Blocking it is a content-licensing decision, not an SEO one.

What this means for your links

• A nofollow link pointing at you can still get you cited. An AI system reading that page sees your brand name and URL like any other text. The attribute does not hide you.
• Nofollow on your outbound links will not stop AI crawlers reaching those pages. If that is your goal, the attribute is the wrong tool.
• Mentions matter more than they used to. A nofollow mention on a forum thread that an AI assistant reads can put your name into an answer, with no link credit involved at all.
• Check your robots.txt, not your rel attributes, if you want to control what AI systems do with your content.

The practical takeaway is that the old habit of judging a link purely by whether it is followed has got weaker. A nofollow link on a page people and machines actually read is worth more than a followed link on a page nobody visits.

Importance of Nofollow Links

A natural backlink profile contains nofollow links, because real websites use them. Comment sections, forums, Wikipedia, most large news sites, social platforms and press release wires nearly all apply nofollow or ugc automatically.

If your profile contains nothing but followed links, that pattern is the giveaway. Nobody earns links that way. This matters most if you build links with automation, where it is easy to end up with a profile that looks manufactured.

Benefits of Nofollow Links

• Referral traffic. Visitors do not know or care what your rel attribute says. A link on an active forum can outperform a followed link on a dead blog.
• A natural-looking profile. The mix is the signal, not the count.
• Discovery that leads to followed links. Someone finds you through a nofollow mention, likes what they see, and links to you properly from their own site.
• Brand visibility with people and machines. Your name appears in places both readers and AI systems look.
• A crawl path Google may still take. Since March 2020 the attribute no longer guarantees the link is a dead end.

Implementing Nofollow Links

Use the attribute that describes the truth about the link:

1. Paid or sponsored placement — use rel="sponsored". This includes affiliate links, paid reviews and advertising.
2. Anything a visitor posted — use rel="ugc". Comments, forum replies, user profiles.
3. Everything else you do not want to endorse — use rel="nofollow".
4. Keeping a page out of Google — do not use any of these. Use a noindex meta tag, or block it in robots.txt if you do not want it crawled.
5. Controlling AI training or citation — use robots.txt with the specific bot names.

In WordPress you can set these per link in the editor, and most SEO plugins can apply them site-wide to comment links and external links automatically.

Evaluating Nofollow Links

Judge a nofollow link by what it can actually do for you, not by the attribute:

• Does the page get visitors? If yes, the link has value regardless of the rel attribute.
• Is it relevant to what you do? A nofollow link from a busy SEO forum beats a followed link from an unrelated directory.
• Is the site one AI systems are likely to read? Established forums, documentation sites and community Q&A pages get read heavily.
• Could it turn into something more? A mention in front of the right audience often does.

Differentiating Nofollow and DoFollow Links

One thing worth clearing up: “dofollow” is not a real attribute. There is no rel="dofollow". A followed link is simply a link with no rel attribute on it. The word exists only because people needed an opposite for nofollow.

Question	Followed link	Nofollow link
Passes ranking credit?	Yes	Not directly
Guaranteed to be followed?	Yes	No, but Google may follow it anyway
Sends referral traffic?	Yes	Yes
Read by AI crawlers?	Yes	Yes, the attribute is ignored
Keeps a page out of Google?	No	No, use noindex instead
Written as	No rel attribute	rel=”nofollow”, “sponsored” or “ugc”

Statistics

Hard numbers on nofollow are scarce, and most figures floating around SEO articles have no source behind them. The most substantial study is Ahrefs’ analysis of the top 110,000 sites by Ahrefs Rank, published May 2020, shortly after the new attributes arrived:

• 10.6% of all backlinks to the studied sites carried rel="nofollow".
• 35.3% of the sites used nofollow on their own internal links, covering 3.6% of internal links overall.
• Adoption of the new attributes was tiny: only 0.44% of referring domains used rel="ugc" and 0.01% used rel="sponsored".

Two honest caveats. The study is from 2020, so treat it as a snapshot rather than today’s number. And the low uptake of sponsored and ugc means most of the web still labels everything nofollow, which is why the plain attribute remains the one you see most.

The screenshot above shows our own backlink profile with nofollow links highlighted, which gives you an idea of the mix a working site ends up with.

External Links

Primary sources, so you can check any of this yourself:

• Google Search Central: qualify your outbound links — the official definition of nofollow, sponsored and ugc.
• Google’s September 2019 announcement — where the hint change and the two new attributes were introduced.
• Google’s crawler list — including Google-Extended and what blocking it does and does not affect.
• OpenAI’s crawler documentation — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, and how to control each.
• Ahrefs: nofollow, ugc and sponsored adoption study — the source of the figures above.

How To

How to check the follow status of your backlinks

1. Open your backlink profile in Ahrefs, Semrush or Search Console.
2. Filter by follow status and note the ratio, not just the totals.
3. Sort the nofollow links by referring traffic. The ones sending visitors are the ones that matter.
4. If you have almost no nofollow links, that is worth fixing before you build anything else.

How to place nofollow links in a tiered campaign

If you run automated link building, nofollow links have an obvious home. Keep tier one relevant and clean, and let the lower tiers carry the volume, where a mix of followed and nofollow links is exactly what you want. Our tiered link building workflow covers how the tiers fit together, and the anchor text guide covers the ratios.

How to stop worrying about the follow status

Ask one question instead: would a real person plausibly click this link? If the answer is yes, take it. If the answer is no, the rel attribute was never the problem with that link.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the SEO value of nofollow links?

They do not pass ranking credit directly, which is the point of the attribute. Their value is referral traffic, a natural-looking backlink profile, brand visibility, and the followed links that often come later when someone discovers you through the mention.

Do nofollow links count in my backlink profile?

Yes, and you want them there. Around 10.6% of backlinks carry nofollow according to Ahrefs’ 2020 study of 110,000 sites. A profile made up only of followed links does not look like something anyone earned naturally.

How do search engines treat nofollow now?

As a hint rather than an instruction. Google made all three link attributes hints for ranking purposes in September 2019, and made nofollow a hint for crawling and indexing on 1 March 2020. Google may follow a nofollow link if it chooses to.

Do AI crawlers and LLMs respect nofollow?

No. Nofollow is a search-ranking signal and AI crawlers do not use it. OpenAI, Google and the other operators document robots.txt as the control mechanism, with separate bot names for training, search and user-initiated fetches. If you want to control what AI systems do with your content, robots.txt is the lever.

Can a nofollow link get me mentioned in an AI answer?

Yes. An AI system reading a page sees your brand name and URL as text, whatever the rel attribute says. A nofollow mention on a busy forum thread can put you into an answer without passing any link credit at all.

What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?

Sponsored is for paid placements and affiliate links. Ugc is for anything a visitor posted, such as comments and forum replies. Nofollow is the catch-all for everything else you do not want to endorse. You can combine them on one link.

Can I use nofollow to keep a page out of Google?

No, and this catches people out. Nofollow was never an indexing control, and since March 2020 it is only a hint. Use a noindex meta tag to keep a page out of the index, or robots.txt to stop it being crawled.

My Final Thoughts on Nofollow Links

I have been building links since December 2012, and the argument about nofollow has not really moved on. People still chase followed links and throw away nofollow opportunities that would have sent them actual customers.

Two things have changed the picture. Google made the attribute a hint rather than a rule, so the hard line between followed and nofollow got blurry. And AI systems arrived that ignore the attribute completely, which means a mention on a page people read now carries weight that has nothing to do with link credit.

Build a profile that looks like something a real business would have. That means a mix, and the mix includes nofollow.

If you would rather have the whole thing run for you, we build and manage tiered campaigns as a done-for-you GSA SER project, and supply the verified link lists, VPS hosting and proxies behind them. Get in touch and tell us what you are working on.