Definition

A dofollow link is a standard `<a href>` link without a `rel` value of `nofollow`, `sponsored`, or `ugc`, meaning Google will fetch and parse it without any qualification.

There is no actual `rel="dofollow"` attribute in the HTML specification — the term is used by the SEO community to describe the default state of any link. Google's outbound link guidance says explicitly that for regular links you expect Google to follow, no `rel` attribute is needed. The label only exists because the inverse states (`nofollow`, `sponsored`, `ugc`) do exist.

Examples

• Editorial link in a news article

  A journalist links from an article to a referenced study using a plain `<a href="https://example.edu/study">`. With no rel attribute, the link is dofollow and Google treats it as a standard editorial reference.

• Internal navigation link

  A site's main navigation links between category pages without any rel attribute. These are dofollow by default, so Googlebot crawls them and uses them to discover the rest of the site.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Qualify your outbound links to Google

Related terms

• Nofollow
  A link attribute (`rel="nofollow"`) telling search engines not to associate the source page with — or pass ranking credit to — the linked page.
• Sponsored Link
  A link marked with rel="sponsored" to indicate it was created as part of an advertisement, sponsorship, or other paid placement.
• UGC Link
  A link marked with rel="ugc" to indicate it was created in user-generated content such as a forum post, comment, or review.
• Backlink
  A hyperlink on one website that points at another. Search engines treat backlinks as one signal of how the wider web vouches for a page.
• External Link
  An HTML link that points from one website to a different domain, also called an outbound link from the source site's perspective.
• Link Equity
  An SEO-community term for the ranking value that one page can pass to another through a link, related to what Google originally called PageRank.
• Anchor Text
  The visible, clickable text inside a hyperlink. Search engines use it as a hint about the topic of the page being linked to.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Page Optimisation