Do nofollow Links Help SEO? The nofollow links don’t pass PageRank the way they used to, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless. Here’s what Google actually says, and how I’d use them.
A client of mine once passed on a guest post slot because someone on her team spotted “nofollow” in the site’s linking policy and that was that. Conversation over. Didn’t matter that the site pulled solid traffic from exactly the readers she wanted. One word in a policy doc killed the whole thing before anyone bothered checking the actual numbers.
I still think about that call sometimes, because it’s such a common way people reason about this, and it’s built on an idea of SEO that honestly stopped being fully true years ago.
So let’s actually work through it. Do nofollow links help SEO, or are they dead weight sitting on a page? Turns out the real answer sits somewhere in the middle, and once you get how Google treats these links now, you’ll probably stop fixating on one HTML attribute and start paying attention to stuff that actually moves the needle.
What a nofollow link even is
It’s a normal link with one small addition in the code: rel="nofollow". Showed up back in 2005, mostly to deal with comment spam, which was genuinely out of control back then. People were dumping links to their own sites in blog comments everywhere just to grab a sliver of PageRank, and search engines needed some way for site owners to say, basically, “I’m linking to this, I’m not endorsing it.”
For well over a decade that’s all it meant. Nofollow equals no ranking credit, full stop. Google might still crawl the destination page some other way, but the link itself didn’t count for anything.
That was the understanding for years. Then in 2019 it quietly got more complicated, and a lot of people in SEO never fully caught up.
What actually changed in 2019
Two things happened that year, and the second one is the one people keep missing.
Google rolled out two new attributes to sit alongside nofollow: sponsored for paid or affiliate links, and ugc for comments, forum posts, that kind of thing. Gave site owners a way to be more specific about what kind of link they were dealing with instead of dumping everything under one tag.
And then, more importantly, Google said all three of these would now be treated as hints rather than hard rules. Before, nofollow meant ignore it, no exceptions, period. After, Google started saying it “may” use these links as a signal for crawling and ranking, which is a pretty different thing. It means Google decides case by case whether a link carries weight, instead of automatically tossing it every time.
You can go read Google’s documentation on this yourself. It still says to use nofollow, sponsored, and ugc appropriately. It just doesn’t promise anymore that doing so makes the link invisible to its systems. So basically: Google keeps the option open to count a nofollow link if its systems decide it’s a useful signal for something.
Okay, so do nofollow links help SEO?
If you mean “will this directly bump my rankings the way a solid dofollow link would,” probably not, and I wouldn’t count on it. Google hasn’t done a total about-face here. Dofollow links from relevant, trusted sites are still among the strongest signals out there, and nofollow links tend to carry less weight on average, hint or no hint.
But if you mean “are they worthless,” no, that’s just not accurate anymore, if it ever fully was.
A few things they actually do for you, separate from whatever Google decides to do with the ranking signal:
They bring real visitors. A nofollow link sitting on a busy forum thread or a popular blog still gets clicked by actual people, and those people couldn’t care less what the HTML attribute says. Traffic that converts is traffic that converts.
They build name recognition, slowly. Your brand popping up in more places, even nofollowed, adds up. People start half-remembering your name before they’ve even clicked through once, and that familiarity does quiet work over time that’s hard to measure but easy to underestimate.
They make your link profile look like it belongs to a real website. This one trips people up. If literally every backlink you have is dofollow with perfectly matched anchor text, that pattern looks engineered, because it is. Real sites end up with a messy pile of nofollow and dofollow links from comments, social shares, citations, mentions, all kinds of stuff. A healthy dose of nofollow links in the mix actually makes you look more legitimate, not less.
They sometimes lead to better links later. I’ve watched this happen. A nofollow mention on a well-trafficked industry forum once led to three separate dofollow citations within a month, just because more eyeballs landed on the piece and a few of those people decided it was worth linking to properly.
And there’s the open possibility Google uses them directly anyway. Nobody outside Google knows how often, or under what conditions, but after the 2019 statement, “nofollow links do literally nothing” just isn’t a defensible claim anymore.
Where you actually run into these links
It helps to know where nofollow tends to show up, because the list is basically a who’s-who of high-traffic places.
Blog comments and forum posts, nearly always, since most platforms slap nofollow or ugc on automatically to cut down spam. Every link on Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, all nofollow, no exceptions. Wikipedia nofollows literally every outbound link on the entire site, and people still fight tooth and nail to get cited there because the exposure and credibility are worth it regardless. Press releases and syndicated news usually carry nofollow or sponsored. Paid placements and affiliate links are technically supposed to use sponsored under Google’s own rules, and plenty of publishers stack nofollow on top just to be safe. Directory and listing sites nofollow their outbound links too, more often than not.
If you wrote off every one of those because of the tag, you’d be cutting yourself out of a lot of genuinely good exposure.
A bit of backstory: PageRank sculpting
Worth knowing why Google got so hardline about this in the first place, because it explains why some SEOs still treat nofollow like it’s radioactive.
Around 2008, 2009-ish, some clever SEOs realized they could nofollow links to their own unimportant pages, like a privacy policy page nobody cares about, so that more PageRank would pool on the pages they actually wanted ranking. Worked for a while. Then Google changed how it calculates PageRank internally specifically to shut this down. Matt Cutts, who was running Google’s webspam team at the time, confirmed publicly that sculpting via internal nofollow links didn’t work the way people thought anymore.
That whole episode is honestly most of the reason nofollow got such an all-or-nothing reputation. The actual rules have loosened a lot since then. The fear stuck around longer than the policy did, which happens a lot in SEO, if I’m honest.
When to actually use nofollow yourself
Put it on any paid, affiliate, or sponsored link, or better yet use the sponsored tag specifically, since that’s what Google’s spam policies actually ask for. Selling dofollow links without disclosing it can get you a manual action, and that’s not a fun email to receive.
Put ugc on comments and anything submitted by users rather than your own staff. Most CMS platforms do this automatically now, but check, don’t assume.
Use plain nofollow on anything you’re linking to but not vouching for, like a source you disagree with or a page you can’t fully verify.
Don’t bother nofollowing your own internal links trying to sculpt authority around your site. That stopped working a long time ago, as covered above, and doing it now just confuses your own link structure for no benefit.
None of this matters if the content’s weak
Here’s the thing everyone skips while arguing about nofollow versus dofollow: it’s mostly irrelevant if nobody wants to link to your page at all, tag or not. The actual leverage point was never the HTML attribute. It’s whether your page is worth referencing in the first place.
This matters a lot if you’re doing outreach or guest posting. If you’re pitching a site that’s going to nofollow or sponsor-tag your link no matter what, the only way that placement actually pays off is if the writing itself is good enough to pull traffic, build some recognition, and eventually earn a real dofollow citation somewhere down the line.
So the writing has to actually hold up. Before I send any outreach piece out, I’ll usually run it through an AI content checker, mostly because editors at decent publications are getting sharper at spotting generic AI-flavored drafts and rejecting them without a second thought. Even a free AI content checker free tool can catch sections that read stiff or formulaic before an editor ever opens the file. I’ll also check it with an AI content detector, not because that score means anything to Google, but because it points at the paragraphs that need more of my actual voice in them.
If something comes back sounding too robotic, don’t just shove it through an AI Paraphraser and assume it’s fixed. Those tools mostly just rearrange the furniture without adding anything, and editors who read a lot of submissions can usually spot that pattern pretty fast. Better to go back and drop in a real example, a specific detail nobody else would know, something only you could write. A lot of people lean on a humanizer ai free tool as a quick fix here, and sure, it’ll smooth the surface a bit, but it doesn’t actually add substance underneath. Treat it as a rough first pass, not the final answer.
This is also where Claude SEO is genuinely handy if you’re doing this kind of outreach regularly. It measures the AI ratio in your draft and shows you where it’s leaning too hard on generic, machine-sounding phrasing, so you can go fix those spots with real judgment before the piece ever lands on an editor’s desk, nofollow link or not. Content that feels like someone actually thought about it gets shared and cited on its own. Generic content gets ignored, regardless of what rel attribute eventually ends up on the link.
Quick myth-busting
Nofollow links are worthless — not really, not anymore. They bring traffic, build recognition, and occasionally function as a ranking hint, by Google’s own admission.
A nofollow from a huge site equals a dofollow from a small one — nope, not quite. Dofollow links from strong, relevant sites still tend to carry more direct weight. Nofollow brings different value, not an equal swap.
Skip any site that nofollows everything — I wouldn’t go that far. If the traffic and audience are real, the exposure’s often worth it on its own, especially if it leads somewhere better later.
Google ignores nofollow completely now — also not right. It’s a hint Google may or may not act on. Not a guaranteed zero, not a guaranteed pass either.
Nofollowing internal links helps concentrate authority — stopped working years ago, once Google reworked how PageRank flows internally.
Before you chase or dismiss a link
Skip the knee-jerk reaction to the rel attribute and ask better questions instead. Does this site get real traffic from people who’d actually care what you wrote? Is the placement contextually relevant, or just a random drive-by mention? Would someone clicking through stick around at all? Does your industry actually respect this site, even if they wouldn’t give you a dofollow link themselves?
Mostly yes? Don’t let the nofollow tag talk you out of it. Mostly no, low quality, clearly selling links in bulk? The tag was never really the issue there anyway, the opportunity just wasn’t good.
Stuff people actually ask me
Do nofollow links help SEO at all right now?
Indirectly, yeah, through traffic, recognition, a healthier-looking link profile, and occasionally as an actual signal per Google’s own 2019 statement. Not a replacement for strong dofollow links, but far from useless.
Should I disavow nofollow links pointing at me?
No. Disavow is for toxic, spammy stuff specifically. A nofollow from a legit site is harmless, and might be doing something quietly good.
Can too many nofollow links hurt me?
Not really, not directly. A profile that’s 100% dofollow with exact-match anchors actually looks more suspicious to Google’s spam systems than a natural mix with plenty of nofollow in it.
Worth paying for a guest post that’s nofollow anyway?
Depends entirely on the site’s actual traffic and relevance, not the tag. A nofollow spot on a site people actually read beats a dofollow link on some dead site nobody visits.
Does Google really use nofollow links for ranking sometimes?
Since 2019 they’ve said it’s possible, as a hint in crawling and ranking. No details on how often. I’d treat it as a maybe, not a plan.
Bottom line
So, do nofollow links help SEO? Not in the old direct “pass me some PageRank” way everyone got taught. But they’re not dead weight either. Real traffic, real brand recognition, a more natural-looking link profile, and occasionally, by Google’s own admission, a factor in rankings too.
Stop sorting opportunities into worth-it and worthless based on one tag. Look at the actual audience, actual traffic, actual relevance. And whatever you’re sending out, nofollow or dofollow, make sure it’s good enough to actually deserve the spot it’s getting. That part was never going anywhere, whatever Google decides to do with rel attributes next.
