A dofollow link passes a signal to Google that says “I vouch for this page.” A nofollow link tells Google “I’m linking here, but don’t count it as my endorsement.” That’s the whole difference in a sentence. What’s shifted is how much weight that second instruction carries, and the change is more recent than a lot of link-building habits would suggest.
This covers what the two link types mean, the 2020 update that reshaped how nofollow works, and the handful of moments where the distinction is worth your time.
Content Overview
What’s the difference between dofollow and nofollow links?
Every link you create is a dofollow link by default. You don’t add anything to make it one. When a site links to your page with a normal link, it passes along a vote of confidence that can help your rankings.
A nofollow link is a normal link with one extra instruction in the code: rel=”nofollow”. It still works for a human clicking it. It just signals to search engines that the linking site isn’t putting its weight behind the destination.
You’ll find nofollow on the links you’d expect: paid placements, affiliate links, blog comments, forum posts, and anywhere a site can’t personally vouch for where the link goes. Large publishers, social platforms, and anything user-generated tend to nofollow by default.
Do nofollow links still work the way they used to?
For its first 15 years, nofollow was a hard directive. Google saw the attribute and dropped the link entirely, as if it weren’t there.
That changed in March 2020. Google turned nofollow from a directive into a hint, so it now reads the link and decides for itself whether to factor it in. At the same time, it added two more specific attributes: rel=”sponsored” for paid and affiliate links, and rel=”ugc” for user-generated content like comments.
Google made the switch so it could keep learning from links it used to throw away. A nofollow mention from a major news site still tells Google something about your brand, even if the site isn’t formally endorsing you. You can read the official guidance in Google’s documentation on qualifying outbound links.
For your own outbound links, the practical version is simple. Use sponsored for anything paid, ugc for anything your users post, and plain dofollow for content you genuinely stand behind.
When does the dofollow vs nofollow difference matter?
Most of the time, you won’t be choosing link types by hand. The sites linking to you decide that. Where it matters is when you’re building links or running paid placements yourself.
If you’re paying for a placement, a sponsored post, or running an affiliate program, tag those links as sponsored. Passing dofollow value through paid links is the pattern Google’s manual actions target, and it’s a common reason sites end up needing penalty recovery.
If you’re chasing links as part of your link building, the instinct to hunt only for dofollow links is wrong. A backlink profile that’s 95%+ dofollow looks unnatural, because real link acquisition always pulls in a mix. The publications, directories, and social platforms that mention growing brands nofollow as standard.
Do nofollow links stop a page being indexed?
A nofollow link doesn’t stop your page being crawled or indexed.
The attribute only withholds the endorsement signal through that specific link. Googlebot can still reach your page through any other route: a dofollow link elsewhere, your sitemap, or a direct mention. So a nofollow link from a high-traffic site is still worth having. It sends you real visitors, it builds familiarity, and it can lead to the kind of unprompted dofollow mentions that move the needle later.
If your only measure of a link is whether it’s dofollow, you’ll talk yourself out of placements that are genuinely good for the business.
Do nofollow links matter for AI search?
The dofollow-only mindset gets shakier when you look at where discovery is heading. A 2025 Semrush study of 1,000 domains found that nofollow and dofollow links correlate almost identically with visibility in AI search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews appear to treat both as meaningful signals of who’s worth citing.
That makes sense once you stop thinking about links as votes and start thinking about them as evidence. An AI model trying to work out which brands matter in your category reads every credible mention, endorsed or not. Being named in the right places is the point, which is the same logic behind any sound generative engine optimisation.
Where should you focus your link efforts?
The real job was never sorting links into good and bad piles. It’s earning mentions from places your customers already trust, and tagging your own paid and user-generated links honestly so you stay on the right side of Google. Do that, and the dofollow-to-nofollow ratio takes care of itself.
If you want a clearer read on whether your backlink profile is helping or holding you back, have a chat with us and we’ll tell you what we’d do with it.
Jakeb Munn
Senior SEO Specialist
