Nofollow vs dofollow: the distinction that matters less than you think

Two facts about this topic sit oddly together. It is one of the most searched link questions in SEO, and it is one of the least consequential once you understand it. The obsession comes from a picture that is wrong: that links come in two kinds, one that "passes value" and one that is worthless, and that a campaign should chase the first and avoid the second. The real picture is duller and more useful. There is no attribute called dofollow, the nofollow attribute is a hint rather than a wall, and a link Google does not follow can still send you the visitor who becomes a client.

What is the difference between nofollow and dofollow?

A dofollow link is any normal link with no special attribute; dofollow is not a real HTML value. A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", which tells Google generally not to follow it. Google treats that as a hint, not a hard rule, and such a link can still be seen and bring visitors.

Quick answer

• "Dofollow" is not a real attribute. It is jargon for an ordinary link with nothing added to it.
• Nofollow is a hint, not a directive. Google decides; the attribute steers, it does not command.
• A nofollow link can still be crawled and its page indexed. The attribute is not noindex.
• Traffic ignores the attribute entirely. A visitor who clicks arrives whether or not Google follows the link.

What kind of distinction this is

The framing that causes the trouble treats the attribute as a switch on the link's power: dofollow on, nofollow off. Under that idea the whole game is collecting the "on" links and discarding the rest, and a nofollow is a wasted effort.

The mechanism is not a switch, it is a signal Google reads among others. Since 2019 Google has said it treats these link attributes as hints about which links to consider, which means the attribute informs a decision rather than dictating it. A dofollow link is not guaranteed to pass anything, and a nofollow one is not guaranteed to pass nothing; both feed a judgment you do not control. Once the attribute stops being a switch, the question stops being "is this link dofollow" and becomes the one that always mattered, whether the link is real and relevant, which is the whole of how to get backlinks.

Where the word "dofollow" comes from, and why it misleads

There is no rel="dofollow". Google's documentation lists three values for outbound links, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, and a normal link simply has none of them. "Dofollow" was invented by SEOs to name the absence, and naming an absence makes it feel like a feature you can acquire. It is not. When someone offers to sell you "dofollow backlinks", they are describing ordinary links with a word that implies a property they cannot grant, because whether Google follows a link is Google's call, not the attribute's.

This matters because the invented word drives real decisions. People refuse a placement on a major site because it is nofollow, and pursue a dofollow link from a site nobody reads. The attribute got weighed and the source got ignored, which is backwards. A relevant mention on a trusted site is worth more nofollowed than an irrelevant one dofollowed, and understanding why is technical SEO applied to the link rather than the page.

The three things people get wrong

"A nofollow link means the page cannot be indexed." It confuses two different attributes. Nofollow is about following the link; noindex is about indexing a page. Google's documentation is explicit that pages reached by nofollow links "may still be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and thus they may still be crawled." A nofollow link does not hide the destination from Google, and the reasons a page actually stays out of the index are separate, listed in why a page is not indexed.

"Nofollow links are worthless." Only if the sole thing a link can do is move rankings. A nofollow link on a high-traffic page sends real visitors who do not know or care about the attribute, and some of them convert. It also builds the kind of presence a generative engine reads, because a mention is a mention whether or not it is followed, which is part of how to get cited by ChatGPT. The attribute governs one channel, ranking, and is silent on the other two, traffic and citation.

"Dofollow links should be chased above all." A profile made only of followed links, all with matching keyword anchors, is the pattern a spam system is built to catch. A natural profile is mixed: followed and nofollowed, branded and bare, from sites of every size. The mix is the tell of something earned, and the anchor discipline behind it is the same as internal linking, where an identical anchor repeated everywhere reads as generated.

Where the attribute genuinely matters

It matters in one direction, on your own outbound links, not on the ones pointing at you. When you link to an advertisement or a paid placement, rel="sponsored" declares it was paid for, and when a link sits in a comment or a forum post, rel="ugc" flags it as user-generated. Getting these right on your own site keeps you clear of selling ranking signals, the line between organic and paid work drawn in SEO versus Google Ads. An agency that talks about the nofollow status of links pointing at you, rather than the quality of the sites, is measuring the wrong thing, which is one of the tells in how to tell if your SEO agency is working.

When to stop worrying about it

When the link is from a relevant, trusted source. Take it whatever its attribute, because the visit and the association are worth having.

When someone sells you "dofollow" as the feature. That word is the tell that the offer is priced on a property the seller cannot control.

When you are auditing your own outbound links. That is the one place the attribute is your decision, and marking ads and user content correctly is the part that is actually in your hands, alongside earned links from real work like digital PR.

Mistakes that repeat

• Refusing a nofollow link from a strong site. The source outweighs the attribute; a trusted mention brings visitors regardless.
• Buying "dofollow backlinks". The word implies a property no seller can grant, since Google decides what it follows.
• Confusing nofollow with noindex. One is about following a link, the other about indexing a page; they are unrelated.
• Building a profile of only followed, keyword-anchor links. That uniformity is exactly what a spam system flags.
• Ignoring sponsored and ugc on your own site. Mislabeling paid or user links is the mistake the attributes exist to prevent.
• Measuring inbound links by attribute instead of by source. The site's relevance and trust decide the value, not the rel value.

Data and transparency

That Google treats the link attributes as hints about which links to consider, and that nofollow became a hint for ranking on 10 September 2019 and for crawling and indexing on 1 March 2020, is from Google's Search Central blog post "Evolving nofollow", published 10 September 2019. That links with these rel attributes "will generally not be followed" and that the linked pages "may still be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and thus they may still be crawled", and that the three values are sponsored, ugc and nofollow, are quoted from Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links, opened on 16 September 2026. That there is no rel="dofollow" value follows from that same list, which does not include it. Search demand for "nofollow vs dofollow", about 200 monthly searches in the United States with a keyword difficulty of 9 and a cost per click around 0.25 USD, comes from Ahrefs on 16 September 2026. Google does not publish the weight a followed link carries as a ranking signal, so no such figure appears here. Verified as of September 2026.

Primary sources: Google on evolving nofollow, 10 September 2019; Google on qualifying outbound links, opened 16 September 2026.

What this changes

The nofollow-versus-dofollow question is asked as if the answer sorts links into good and bad, so a strategy could be built on collecting one and refusing the other. The answer dissolves the sorting. One of the two is not even an attribute, the other is a hint rather than a rule, and neither settles whether a link is worth having.

What changes when you see that is the question you ask of a link. It stops being "will this pass value" and becomes "is this from somewhere relevant and trusted, and will a real person arrive through it". Those decide the outcome, and they were never about the rel attribute. The attribute is a label the source writes; the value is something the source either has or does not, and no word appended to the link can add it.

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