A dofollow link is an ordinary link that carries no rel value such as nofollow, sponsored or ugc. The word comes from SEO practice. No HTML attribute rel="dofollow" exists in Google’s documentation.
What does dofollow mean?
A link without qualification is the default on the web. Calling it “dofollow” separates it from links that are marked. Google describes three values for marking links.
nofollowwhen you prefer that Google does not associate your site with the linked pagesponsoredfor ads and paid placementsugcfor user-generated content such as comments and forum posts
In its announcement of September 10, 2019, Google said all three attributes are treated as hints for ranking, and that nofollow would become a hint for crawling and indexing as of March 1, 2020. Some third-party sources still claim that nofollow links keep pages out of crawling and indexing.
In marketing, “dofollow” often refers to a link that can pass ranking value from the linking site. Link sellers list it as a feature. Google’s spam policies state that paid links must be qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", so a paid link without a qualifier falls under link spam (see buying links).
| Value | Purpose according to Google | Required? | How Google treats it |
|---|---|---|---|
no rel value (often called "dofollow") (this term) | regular link that Google is expected to fetch and parse without qualification | –; Google has no dofollow value | Google can follow and parse the link |
rel="sponsored" | advertisements and paid placements | for paid links, sponsored (preferred) or nofollow; otherwise link spam under the spam policies | hint; links with this value are generally not followed |
rel="ugc" | links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts | recommended; can be removed for members with a consistent record of high-quality contributions | hint; links with this value are generally not followed |
rel="nofollow" | when no other value applies and you'd rather Google not associate your site with the target or crawl it from your site | no; still acceptable for paid links | hint, for ranking since 10 Sept 2019 and for crawling and indexing since 1 March 2020 |
nofollow as a robots meta rule | don't follow the links on this page | no | applies to every link on the page |
Target pages can still be found and crawled through sitemaps or links from other sites. Several values can be combined, separated by spaces or commas, for example ugc nofollow. For links within your own site, Google points to a robots.txt Disallow rule, and to noindex for keeping a page out of the index. Sources: Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links to Google (last updated 2025-12-10); Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search, link spam (last updated 2026-08-28); Google Search Central Blog: Evolving "nofollow" – new ways to identify the nature of links (2019-09-10); Google Search Central: Robots meta tag specifications, nofollow. Last checked: .
How can you tell if a link is dofollow?
Open the page source or inspect the element. If the rel attribute is missing or contains none of the three values, the link is a normal link. Browser extensions and crawlers show this in a table.
Example
<!-- Normal link, called "dofollow" in SEO practice -->
<a href="https://www.example.com/">Example</a>
<!-- Qualified link -->
<a href="https://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Example</a>
FAQ
Is dofollow an official HTML attribute? No. A link without qualifying rel values is simply a link.
Do nofollow links pass any value? Google calls nofollow, sponsored and ugc hints. How it uses them is not published in detail.
Sources
- Qualify your outbound links to Google – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Evolving nofollow – new ways to identify the nature of links – Google Search Central Blog, September 2019developers.google.com
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