Definition

Nofollow is a value of the `rel` attribute on an HTML link (`<a rel="nofollow">`) that tells search engines not to treat the link as an endorsement of the destination page.

Google introduced nofollow in 2005 to combat comment spam. Since 2019, Google treats the attribute as a hint rather than a strict directive — meaning Google may still consider the link for crawling and ranking. The same documentation introduced two more specific values: `rel="sponsored"` for paid or affiliate links and `rel="ugc"` for user-generated content. A single link can carry more than one of these values, e.g., `rel="sponsored nofollow"`.

Examples

• Affiliate links on a review blog

  A product-review blog appends `rel="sponsored nofollow"` to every affiliate link in its posts. Google still discovers the linked URLs but does not treat the links as endorsements when ranking the destination pages.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Qualify your outbound links to Google

Related terms

• 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.
• 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