Do Nofollow Links Help SEO? What Nofollow, Sponsored and UGC Links Actually Do

The question usually arrives attached to a decision. A publisher will mention you, but the link will carry rel="nofollow". A vendor quotes one price for a “dofollow” guest post and a lower one for a “sponsored” version. Your developer asks whether affiliate links, comments and the partner directory should all be marked the same way. Each decision depends on what the attributes actually do, and the honest answer is more specific than either “nofollow links are worthless” or “Google counts them now.”

The short answer: do not plan on ranking credit from a nofollow, sponsored or UGC link. Google has described all three attributes as hints since 2019, but its own documentation says links marked this way “will generally not be followed,” and its spokespeople have said such links are unlikely to receive much weight, if any. What those links can still do is send readers, put your brand in front of an audience that may later link to you without qualification, and help search engines discover and understand your pages. None of that is a reason to pay followed-link prices for them, and none of it means they hurt you.

What Nofollow, Sponsored and UGC Links Are

A link attribute is a value placed in the rel attribute of an HTML anchor tag. It tells search engines something about the relationship between the page doing the linking and the page being linked to. A link with no qualifying value is an ordinary editorial link, called a “followed” or “dofollow” link in SEO shorthand; dofollow is not a real attribute, only the absence of one.

Google’s documentation on qualifying outbound links recognizes three values, which can be combined in a single rel attribute.

Note that rel="nofollow" on a single link is different from a page-level nofollow in a robots meta tag, which covers every link on the page. This guide is about the link-level attribute, the one that appears in backlink reports and link-building negotiations.

What Google Has Said, in Order

Most confusion about nofollow comes from mixing statements made at different times. Laid out chronologically, the position is consistent.

1. January 2005: a directive against comment spam. Google introduced nofollow so that blogs and forums could stop automated comment links from earning ranking credit. For the next fourteen years a nofollow link was simply not counted.
2. September 10, 2019: three attributes, all hints. In “Evolving nofollow,” Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes announced sponsored and ugc and said all three values would be treated “as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search.” The stated reason was that links carry information Google did not want to discard, such as how anchor text describes a page and what unnatural patterns look like. The same post said Google would “generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes.”
3. March 1, 2020: the hint model extends to crawling and indexing. From that date, nofollow also became a hint for discovery and indexing. Google added that relying on it to keep a page out of the index was never recommended; noindex or robots.txt do that job.
4. June 2022: “as much, if any, weight.” Asked on Twitter whether a hint meant useful nofollow links now passed value, Danny Sullivan replied that the change meant Google would consider them if there was some usefulness to be found, “though the hint means [we] aren’t likely to give them as much, if any, weight,” as reported by Search Engine Roundtable.
5. January 2023: listed in Search Console at zero value. John Mueller explained that Search Console’s Links report “lists links even if they’re nofollow, even when the link ‘value’ is zero,” in a thread covered by Search Engine Roundtable. That is why the report cannot tell you which of your links pass signals.
6. August 2024: not a quality signal. In Google’s SEO office hours, Martin Splitt said that a site using many nofollow or noindex tags does not signal low-quality content; it only tells Google “that you have links you’re not willing to be associated with.”

Two of these are documentation; the rest are public statements by Google staff that explain how to read it. Together they show that “hint” does not mean “sometimes counted like a normal link.” It means Google keeps the option of using the link for analysis while giving it little or no ranking credit.

Bing’s position is similar and, by its own account, older. When Google made its announcement, Bing’s Fabrice Canel said Bing had “always treated the nofollow link attribute as a ‘hint’,” as reported at the time, and Bing’s webmaster guidelines added support for sponsored and ugc in 2020.

Do Nofollow Links Help SEO? What They Can and Cannot Do

What a nofollow link cannot be relied on for

• Ranking credit. There is no public evidence that qualified links move rankings, and Google’s own framing points the other way. Plan on zero and treat anything above it as a bonus you never counted on.
• Guaranteed discovery. Google may use a nofollow link to find a page, but “may” is doing real work in that sentence. Use a sitemap.
• Replacing editorial links. A profile made only of qualified links from directories, forums and sponsored posts says nobody has cited you without being paid or prompted.

What a nofollow link can still do

• Send qualified visitors. A mention in a widely read newsletter or community thread can drive more sign-ups than a followed link on a page nobody visits. The attribute changes nothing about the click.
• Lead to unqualified links. Journalists and bloggers find sources through the same channels as everyone else, and coverage with a nofollow link is often why a later article links to you normally. Our guide to earning coverage through expert commentary treats nofollow mentions as part of that process, not a failure of it.
• Make a profile look like a real brand’s. Companies accumulate qualified links from Wikipedia, social platforms, forums and press sites. Their presence is normal; their absence from a profile full of followed guest-post links is what looks odd.
• Carry information Google says it uses. The 2019 announcement names anchor text and link patterns as things Google wants to keep seeing. That is a reason to make sure qualified links describe your page accurately, not a reason to buy them.

Is a nofollow link from a major site worth more?

In ranking terms, nothing Google has published suggests the hint is weighted by the size of the linking site; the 2022 statement above was about useful links in general. In every other sense, yes: a nofollow mention on a site your buyers read is worth more than a followed link on a site they have never heard of, because it does everything in the second list at scale. Value it as exposure, and treat the attribute as a reason not to pay a link price for it.

How to Value a Nofollow or Sponsored Placement in a Link Building Campaign

This is where the attributes meet money. Google’s link spam policy lists “text advertisements or text links that don’t block ranking credit” and advertorials where “payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit” as examples of link spam. The same policy says buying and selling links is a normal part of the web’s advertising economy and is not a violation “as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value.”

Put plainly: a paid placement that passes ranking credit is what the policy describes, and a correctly marked one passes none. An offer that promises both payment and a followed link is asking you to pay for a policy violation whose value depends on not being noticed. Apply that lens to every quote, including the ranges in our breakdown of link building costs.

Four questions settle most cases:

1. Would you want this placement if the ranking value were exactly zero? If the audience and referral traffic justify the cost on their own, the attribute does not matter. If ranking credit is the only reason to buy and the link is qualified, you are buying nothing.
2. Was the attribute disclosed before you agreed? A publisher’s link policy is knowable in advance. A vendor who discovers “unfortunately the editor added nofollow” after invoicing either did not check or hoped you would not. Our guest post vetting checklist confirms the policy before a pitch goes out.
3. Is it priced as what it is? A sponsored article is advertising; price it against other advertising on that site, not against editorial links. Editorial-link prices for a placement that will be, and should be, marked sponsored are wrong even when the placement is fine.
4. How will it appear in your reports? A single “links built” number that mixes qualified and followed links overstates the campaign; the attribute should be a column in every report. At Ranking Frontier, link building and guest posting placements are disclosed as nofollow or sponsored before they are arranged and never counted as followed links in the total.

The last row surprises buyers most often. Our guide to how link building works covers the difference between earning a placement and paying for one; the attribute question is the practical consequence of it.

Which Attribute to Use on Your Own Site

When you are the publisher, the decision is simpler because Google has stated its preferences directly. The 2019 FAQ says there is “no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links”: marking an ordinary link as sponsored costs at most the credit that link would have passed, while leaving an actual advertisement unmarked is the case that creates risk.

• Paid placements, affiliate links, gifted-product reviews, ads: use rel="sponsored". Google prefers it over nofollow for this purpose and treats either as acceptable.
• Comments, forum posts, user profiles, community reviews: use rel="ugc". Google’s documentation suggests you may remove the attribute for contributors who have consistently added high-quality content, which is a reasonable policy for a moderated community.
• Links you cannot vouch for: use rel="nofollow" when a page is a necessary reference but not an endorsement.
• Editorial references and recommendations: no attribute. Nothing Google has published suggests that qualifying every outbound link protects or improves your site.
• Internal links: no attribute. Google points to robots.txt for pages you do not want crawled; nofollow on internal navigation only discards your own signals. Our guide to internal linking covers routing authority deliberately instead.
• Overlapping cases: combine values, for example rel="ugc sponsored" for a paid link in user content, or rel="sponsored nofollow" for compatibility with systems that only read nofollow.

One point sits outside SEO entirely: a rel value is invisible to readers and is not a disclosure. In the United States, the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, revised in 2023, require material connections such as affiliate relationships to be disclosed “clearly and conspicuously,” which the guides define as difficult to miss and easily understandable. Marking a link sponsored satisfies Google; a visible disclosure satisfies your readers and, where it applies, the regulator. You need both.

How to Check Whether a Link Is Nofollow

1. Inspect the element. Right-click the link in a desktop browser, choose Inspect, and read the <a> tag. A rel value containing nofollow, sponsored or ugc means the link is qualified; no rel value, or only unrelated ones such as noopener, means a normal link. Use the inspector rather than “view source,” because some sites add attributes with JavaScript after the page loads.
2. Check the page-level robots meta tag. A robots meta tag in the page head whose content includes nofollow qualifies every link on the page, including those without a rel attribute.
3. For a whole profile, use a backlink tool’s attribute filter to split followed, nofollow, sponsored and UGC links. Do not rely on Search Console: its Links report does not distinguish attributes, one of several reasons it disagrees with other tools, as our article on backlinks missing from Search Console explains.

Auditing the Attribute Mix in Your Backlink Profile

Export your referring domains, split them by attribute, and read the two sets separately. The followed set shows where your ranking signals come from and whether any look like paid placements that should have been marked; the qualified set shows where your brand is visible. There is no published “natural ratio” of nofollow to followed links, and chasing one is a mistake: a consumer app with an active community will be nofollow-heavy, a B2B research publisher will not, and both can be healthy.

What deserves attention is a followed link that looks bought: a page carrying a dozen unrelated commercial links, all followed, all with exact-match anchors. Our guide to auditing backlinks explains when that matters and when disavowing would be an overreaction. A nofollow link almost never needs action; it is already telling search engines not to count it.

Common Mistakes With Link Attributes

• Paying followed-link prices for sponsored placements, or counting qualified links as campaign results without labeling them. Both hide how few followed links are doing the work.
• Using nofollow to keep a page out of search. It has never been a reliable way to do that. Use noindex for pages you want excluded and robots.txt for pages you do not want crawled.
• Nofollowing internal links or every outbound link. Neither protects your rankings, and the first discards signals you control.
• Treating a rel attribute as a legal disclosure. Readers cannot see it. Put the disclosure where they can.
• Disavowing nofollow links. They pass nothing to disavow. Spend the time on followed links instead.
• Rewriting old nofollow markup in bulk. Harmless but unnecessary; Google has said existing nofollow links need no change. Apply the newer values to new links.

FAQs

Conclusion

Nofollow, sponsored and UGC links tell search engines that a link is not a first-party endorsement, and the evidence from Google’s documentation and public statements is that they carry little or no ranking credit. That makes them neither worthless nor dangerous. Received, they are exposure that can turn into traffic and into unqualified links later, and should be valued and priced on that basis. Given, they are the correct way to mark anything paid, user-contributed or unvouched-for, alongside a disclosure readers can see. What a link attribute cannot do is turn a paid placement into an editorial one, and most of the money wasted on “dofollow” promises is spent trying to make it do exactly that.