Short answer: A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" in its a tag, which tells Google you don’t want to vouch for the page it points to. Google also reads rel="sponsored" for ads and paid links and rel="ugc" for links people post on your site. All three are hints, not commands. Links you stand behind need no rel value at all.
When to use each rel value
| rel value | Use it for | What Google says |
|---|---|---|
| None | Links you stand behind | No rel attribute is needed for them |
sponsored | Ads and paid placements | Preferred for paid links, though nofollow is still accepted |
ugc | Links in comments and forum posts | You can drop it for contributors with a long record of good posts |
nofollow | Any other link you don’t want to vouch for | The page can still be crawled if Google finds it another way |
From Google Search Central, “Qualify your outbound links to Google”, read November 3, 2026.
What Google does with these links
Google generally doesn’t follow links with these values. The pages they point to can still be crawled if Google finds them another way, such as a sitemap or a link from another site.
Since 2019 Google treats sponsored, ugc and nofollow as hints, alongside other signals, instead of ignoring those links. One link can carry two values, such as rel="ugc nofollow", separated by a space or a comma.
Nofollow isn’t the way to hide your own pages. To keep Google from fetching a page on your site, use a disallow rule in robots.txt. To keep a page out of its index, allow crawling and use noindex.
Paid links
Google’s spam policies count buying or selling links for ranking as link spam, including exchanging goods or services for links. Ads and sponsorships are a normal part of the web, as long as the link carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
How to qualify the links on your site
- List the links on your site that point to other sites.
- Leave the links to sources you trust without a rel value.
- Add rel="sponsored" to ads and to any link you were paid for.
- Add rel="ugc" to links in comments and forum posts.
- Use rel="nofollow" for any other link you don’t want to vouch for.
- For pages on your own site, use robots.txt or noindex instead of nofollow.
- If you pay for a link on another site, ask for it to carry sponsored or nofollow.
What our own pages use
At 2:44 AM on November 3 we read the 284 pages in our sitemap as a visitor. 242 of them link to other sites in their main text, 1,814 links in all, and none carries nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
Most of those links point to the sources we cite, such as Google’s help pages, and to our founder’s LinkedIn profile. The header and footer add 1,136 more external links, with no rel value either.
It fits how we work: we don’t sell links, and our pages carry no comments from visitors. If we ever ran a paid placement, that link would get sponsored.
Before you publish a link
- Links you stand behind have no rel value.
- Paid links carry sponsored or nofollow.
- Links that visitors post carry ugc.
- Links you pay for on other sites are qualified too.
- No page depends on nofollow to stay out of Google.
- Old nofollow links on ads can stay as they are.
RememberLeave links you stand behind as they are. Use sponsored for paid links, ugc for what visitors post and nofollow for the rest, and keep your own pages out of Google with robots.txt or noindex.
If you want us to review the links on your site, see our technical SEO service.
Quick answers about nofollow links
Is nofollow a command or a hint?
A hint. Since 2019 Google treats sponsored, ugc and nofollow as hints about which links to consider or exclude, alongside other signals. For crawling and indexing, nofollow became a hint on March 1, 2020.
Do I need to change my old nofollow links to sponsored?
No. Google says there’s no need to change the nofollow links you already have, and nofollow is still accepted for ads and sponsored links. It suggests switching to sponsored if or when it’s convenient.
Is dofollow a real rel value?
No. Google doesn’t define a dofollow value. People call a regular link with no rel attribute a dofollow link, and it’s the kind Google expects to fetch and parse without any qualification.
Do nofollow links help SEO?
Not as ranking credit, as a rule. Google says it will generally treat ugc and nofollow links as it did before and not consider them for ranking. They can still bring you visitors who click them.
What happens if I use the wrong value?
Google says there’s no wrong value except on paid links. Marking an ordinary link as sponsored only means Google might not count it as credit for the other page. A link that’s clearly an ad needs sponsored or nofollow.
Sources
Read on November 3, 2026. Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links to Google, Spam policies for Google web search and Evolving “nofollow”, new ways to identify the nature of links. Our own case: the external links on the pages of our sitemap, on November 3, 2026.