Technical Seo
Nofollow Attribute
A link attribute (rel="nofollow") that tells search engines not to pass ranking signals (link equity) through a specific link. Google treats it as a hint rather than a strict directive.
Why Nofollow Attribute Matters for SEO
Nofollow is used to flag links you don't want to vouch for editorially, like user-generated comments, paid placements, or untrusted external links. It doesn't sculpt PageRank the way people think; Google still crawls nofollow links, they just discount the ranking signal.
How Nofollow Attribute Works
You add rel="nofollow" to individual anchor tags, or use the related values rel="sponsored" (for paid links) and rel="ugc" (for user-generated content). Google may or may not follow the link for discovery purposes, but it treats the link equity signal as a hint to discount.
Common Mistakes
- Using nofollow for internal PageRank sculpting, which hasn't worked for years
- Nofollowing all external links as a blanket policy
- Not using rel="sponsored" for paid or affiliate links as Google recommends
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