Nofollow is a hyperlink attribute that tells search engines not to consider a particular link for search engine rankings. This is used in user-generated content like blog comments and forum posts. No follow link attribute, indicated by rel="nofollow" in HTML, manages the quality of outgoing links.
Nofollowed links don’t contribute to SEO in the same way as dofollow. Comment links usually have no follow links, but they can still generate referral traffic, unlike dofollow links that pass on link equity. This hyperlink that Google introduced instructs crawlers to prevent following every link.
Google created the nofollow attribute, which significantly influences link management and link building across websites. These essential nofollow tags maintain a natural and balanced link profile. It's significant when you're marking sponsored links, UGC links, and linked pages from an external website in a blog post.
By using nofollow value to other sites or within paid links of a guest post, site owners can prevent passing link juice to other websites and more links. This is crucial when selling links, accepted guest posts, and sponsored posts not directly relevant to their own site. Moreover, nofollow as SEO efforts avoid blog comment spam and unnatural linking patterns in one site.
Google announced that this is also crucial for crawling and indexing purposes. It enhances the integrity of linked pages and the performance of low-quality sites in search results or Google rankings.
Integrating both nofollow backlinks and follow link attributes creates a natural link profile. Follow links from a relevant site enhance a site’s link authority, while nofollow links ensure selective endorsement of a sponsored link.
There are several methods to identify a nofollowed link:
Go to Ahrefs' “Site Explorer” tool and enter the website’s URL. Check the “Backlink Profile” and then filter to view all the links along with the Nofollow tag.
Access SEMrush's “Backlink Analytics” tool and enter the website’s URL. You can filter such links in the backlinks section to view the Nofollow backlinks or internal links.
Sign in to Moz's Link Explorer and enter the website’s URL. Filter the inbound links to see all the outbound links with nofollow attributes.
Inspect Element. To identify links' attributes, visit the other pages where you can find the link. Right-click on the anchor text of the external links. Select “Inspect” to open the browser’s developer tools. In the HTML code, check for the rel="nofollow."
View Page Source. Open the page with the link. Right-click on the internal link and choose “View Page Source.” Use Ctrl+F to find your link, then check if the link tag includes "nofollow."
