Nofollow (link attribute and robots directive)
Nofollow is a value of the rel attribute on a link that tells Google you do not want to be associated with the linked page or to have it crawled from your site. Google also accepts sponsored for paid links and ugc for user-generated content, and nofollow as a page-wide robots directive. Marked links are generally not followed, but the target can still be found through other paths.
How it looks
On a single link, in the rel attribute of the <a> element:
<a rel="nofollow" href="https://cheese.example.com/Appenzeller_cheese">Appenzeller</a>
<a rel="sponsored" href="https://partner.example.com/offer">Offer</a>
<a rel="ugc nofollow" href="https://forum.example.com/thread/42">thread</a>
For every link on a page, as a robots directive:
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
X-Robots-Tag: nofollow
Regular links need no rel attribute at all. Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links says that for links you expect Google to fetch and parse without qualification, you simply leave it out.
The three values
| Value | Use it for | Note from Google's documentation |
|---|---|---|
sponsored | Advertisements, paid placements, affiliate links | Preferred value for paid links; nofollow still accepted for them |
ugc | Comments, forum posts, other user-generated content | Can be removed for contributors who have proven trustworthy over time |
nofollow | Links where the other values do not apply and you do not want association or crawling | For your own site, use robots.txt instead |
Per the qualify outbound links page, you may list several values separated by spaces or commas. The rel attributes work only in <a> elements that Google can crawl, with one exception: nofollow is also available as a robots meta tag rule.
How Google handles it
Google's qualify outbound links documentation states that links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed. The word "generally" is the point: the linked pages may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and may still be crawled. A nofollow is a statement about your relationship with the link, not a lock on the target.
The same page draws two lines. To prevent Google from fetching a page on your own site, use the robots.txt disallow rule; the entry on robots.txt covers the syntax. To prevent indexing, allow crawling and use the noindex rule, described in the entry on noindex. Nofollow does neither.
As a robots directive, nofollow means "do not follow the links on this page". Google's robots meta tag specification states that without it Google may use the links on the page to discover the linked pages, that none equals noindex, nofollow, and that when a robots tag and a googlebot tag set different rules, Googlebot applies the sum of the negative rules. The specification also lists the same directive for the X-Robots-Tag header, which applies the rule to a response without touching the HTML. All directives are described in the entry on the meta robots tag.
When to use it
- Paid links, affiliate links and sponsored posts:
sponsored. Google's spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, and qualifying the link is the documented way to stay clear of it. - Links in comments, reviews, forum threads and profile pages:
ugc, added automatically by the platform. - Links to pages you cite but do not endorse, or to login, cart and tracking URLs on other hosts:
nofollow. - Pages whose entire link set you do not want followed, such as a syndicated feed listing or a scraped directory: the robots directive.
Do not use nofollow to sculpt internal linking. Google's documentation sends internal cases to robots.txt, and a nofollowed internal link still leaves the target discoverable through the sitemap, the navigation on other pages or external links.
Common mistakes
| Mistake | Effect |
|---|---|
| Nofollow on all external links, including sources and partners | No disclosure benefit; the site looks like it endorses nothing |
Paid links left without sponsored or nofollow | Risk of being treated as link spam |
| Nofollow on internal links to "save crawl budget" | Targets are still discovered elsewhere; the links stop passing internal signals |
Site-wide X-Robots-Tag: nofollow left over from staging | Google stops discovering new pages through your own links |
rel="nofollow" on a link that should carry a canonical signal | Weakens the consolidation you wanted |
| Expecting nofollow to hide a page | The page gets indexed anyway through other paths; use noindex |
How to check it
View the source and search for rel=" on the links in question. With curl, list every nofollowed link on a page:
curl -s https://example.com/page/ | grep -io '<a [^>]*rel="[^"]*nofollow[^"]*"[^>]*>'
Check the page-wide directives too, because they override the per-link decision:
curl -sI https://example.com/page/ | grep -i x-robots-tag
In devtools, the Elements panel shows the rendered DOM, which matters when a script adds or removes rel values. In Search Console there is no nofollow report; the Links report shows which external pages link to you, but not their rel values.
The indexability checker reads meta robots and X-Robots-Tag for up to 10 URLs, treats none as noindex, nofollow and reports what blocks indexing together with the canonical and robots.txt result.
Why monitor it
IndexRise does not monitor the rel attributes of individual links yet. What it does read every night is the page-wide robots directive in the meta tag and in the X-Robots-Tag header, so a none that appears site-wide after a release is reported the next morning as lost indexability on each monitored URL. For per-link checks, a grep on the source remains the tool.
Frequently asked questions
Does nofollow stop Google from crawling the linked page?
Not reliably. Google's documentation says links with these rel values will generally not be followed, but the page may be discovered through sitemaps or links from other sites and crawled anyway.
Should I use nofollow or sponsored for paid links?
Google prefers sponsored for advertisements and paid placements. It states that nofollow is still an acceptable way to flag them, but sponsored is the recommended value.
Can I combine values like rel="ugc nofollow"?
Yes. Google accepts multiple values separated by spaces or commas, for example rel="ugc nofollow" or rel="ugc,nofollow".
Should internal links get nofollow to save crawl budget?
No. For links within your own site Google's documentation points to the robots.txt disallow rule instead. Nofollow on internal links does not keep the URL out of the crawl queue.
What is the difference between rel=nofollow and meta robots nofollow?
The rel value applies to one link. The robots directive, in a meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header, applies to every link on the page. Google lists nofollow as the only rel value that also exists as a robots rule.
Does nofollow keep a page out of the index?
No. To prevent indexing, Google says to allow crawling and use the noindex rule. Nofollow only concerns links.
Updated: 2026-10-20