Short answer: not in the way people mean, but they are worth having, and ignoring them is a mistake.
A nofollow link does not pass ranking credit the way a normal link does. What it does do is bring visitors, keep your link profile looking natural, and increasingly, put you in front of the systems that decide what AI answers cite.
There is also a change most articles state without explaining. Since 2020 nofollow is a hint rather than a rule, which means Google decides what to do with it rather than obeying it.
What a Nofollow Link Actually Is
It is an ordinary link with an attribute attached, telling search engines not to pass ranking credit to the destination.
In the HTML it looks like this:
<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">example</a>
To a visitor it is indistinguishable from any other link. It clicks the same, looks the same, and sends the same traffic. The attribute is a message to search engines, not to people.
The Three Attributes You Will See
Google introduced two more in 2019, so the picture is no longer just follow or nofollow.
- rel=”nofollow”, the general “do not pass credit” attribute.
- rel=”sponsored”, for paid or compensated links, including gifted products and affiliate links.
- rel=”ugc”, for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts.
You can combine them, and Google treats all three as signals that the link should not pass ranking credit in the normal way.
Where Nofollow Came From, and Why It Explains Everything Else
Google introduced the attribute in January 2005, with Yahoo and MSN Search adopting it, for one specific reason: blog comment spam.
At the time, anyone could drop a link in a comment box and gain ranking credit. Nofollow let site owners keep the comments open while telling search engines not to count those links.
That origin explains almost everything about the current landscape. Comments, forums, user profiles and social platforms nofollow by default because they are exactly the places the attribute was invented for.
It also explains why so many genuinely valuable links are nofollow. The attribute was applied by platform, not by link quality, which is the problem Google eventually had to address.
The 2020 Change Everyone Mentions and Few Explain
Until 2019, nofollow was a directive. Google saw it and dropped the link entirely, using nothing from it.
In September 2019 Google announced that nofollow would become a hint, effective for crawling and indexing immediately and for ranking from March 2020.
A hint means Google may take the link into account anyway, if it judges the link useful.
Why Google Made the Change
Because the old behaviour threw away information. Enormous numbers of genuinely editorial links carry nofollow by default: Wikipedia, most forums, most comment systems, most large platforms.
Treating all of them as if they did not exist meant ignoring a real picture of what the web references.
What This Does Not Mean
It does not mean nofollow links now pass ranking credit and you should chase them.
Google has never said how often it uses the hint, on which links, or how much weight it gives them. Anyone quoting a percentage is inventing it.
The honest position: plan as if nofollow links pass nothing, and treat any benefit as a bonus you cannot measure.
So Do They Help? Four Ways They Genuinely Do
1. They Send Real Visitors
This is the most underrated and the least arguable. A nofollow link on a busy page sends people who are already interested, and those people convert.
A followed link from a page nobody reads sends nothing. Judge a link by whether anyone will click it, not only by its attribute.
2. They Make Your Link Profile Look Normal
Natural link profiles contain plenty of nofollow links, because that is how the web is built. Comments, forums, social platforms and directories nofollow by default.
A profile that is almost entirely followed links looks constructed rather than earned. Nofollow links are part of what normal looks like.
3. They Lead to Followed Links
The chain matters more than the single link. Someone finds you through a nofollow link on a forum, likes what they read, and cites you in their own article, which is followed.
This is how most link building actually compounds, and it is invisible in any tool that only counts attributes.
4. They Feed AI Answers, Which Is New
This one is recent enough that most guides have not caught up.
AI assistants cite community platforms heavily. Reddit threads, Quora answers and forum discussions turn up as sources in AI Overviews and chat assistants far more often than their link value would suggest.
Every one of those links is nofollow. If you dismiss nofollow platforms entirely, you are opting out of one of the few channels where being mentioned still reliably produces visibility.
Which Nofollow Links Are Worth Pursuing
Not all of them are, and the difference is about people rather than attributes.
- Worth it: a genuine answer on a busy Reddit or Quora thread, a relevant industry forum, a well-read publication that nofollows by policy, a podcast’s show notes, a profile on a platform your customers actually use.
- Not worth it: mass directory submissions, comment spam, forum signatures dropped without contributing, and profile links on hundreds of sites nobody visits.
The test is simple. If the link would still be worth having in a world with no search engines, take it. If its only purpose is to exist, skip it.
Most of the tactics in the second list are the ones sold as monthly link packages. We covered which of those still do anything separately, along with the ones that stopped working years ago.
Do They Move Domain Rating or Domain Authority?
No, and this is worth knowing because it is the number most people check.
Ahrefs Domain Rating ignores nofollow links entirely. Nofollow, sponsored and ugc links pass zero DR. Moz Domain Authority works the same way and calculates from followed links only.
So a hundred nofollow links will not move either score by a point. If your reporting is built on DR or DA, nofollow work will look like it achieved nothing.
Why That Is the Wrong Measure Anyway
Both are third-party scores. Google does not calculate Domain Authority, does not use it, and does not see it. The same is true of DR.
Which puts nofollow links in an odd position: they do not move a metric that was never a ranking factor. Judging them by that number is wrong twice over.
Measure them the way they actually pay: referral visits, brand searches, and whether they led to a followed link later.
Can a Page Rank With Only Nofollow Links?
For a low-competition query, yes. Plenty of pages rank on relevance and content quality with almost no link equity behind them, because there is nothing much to outrank.
For anything competitive, realistically no. When the pages above you have hundreds of followed referring domains, nofollow links alone will not close that gap.
Why Nobody Can Prove It Either Way
You will find articles claiming an experiment settled this. Treat them carefully.
A site with only nofollow links still has content, internal links, brand searches and user signals working for it, and no test isolates the link attribute from everything else. Nobody outside Google can run a clean experiment on this.
The practical position: build followed links where you can earn them, take nofollow links where they bring people, and do not design a strategy around a question that cannot be answered.
What About Social Media Links?
Almost every link on a social platform is nofollow. Profile links, post links, bio links, on essentially every major network.
So no, posting your URL on social media does not pass ranking credit, and it never has. That does not make it pointless.
What social links actually do is put content in front of people who might link to it from somewhere that does pass credit. The post is distribution, not a link building tactic, and confusing the two is why “we posted it everywhere and nothing happened” is such a common complaint.
The one place it becomes measurable is brand search. People who see you repeatedly start searching for you by name, and that is a signal Google can act on.
Can Nofollow Links Hurt You?
Effectively no, and this matters because it settles a question people spend money on.
Since nofollow links pass no ranking credit, spam ones pointing at your site are not damaging you. Google’s systems ignore junk links as a matter of course, because otherwise anyone could harm a competitor by pointing rubbish at them.
Which means you almost certainly do not need to disavow them. Google’s position is that the disavow tool is not part of normal site maintenance and is really for sites with a manual action.
The “toxic link” scores that push people toward disavowing come from third-party tools, not from Google. If you are worried about links pointed at you deliberately, our guide to negative SEO covers what is worth acting on.
When You Should Nofollow Your Own Links
The other half of this question, and the half most articles skip. You are not only receiving these links, you are placing them.
Google’s spam policies are explicit that paid placement is normal, provided the links are marked. What is not allowed is unmarked links that pass ranking credit in exchange for money or goods.
- Affiliate links, mark with sponsored. This is a policy requirement, not a preference.
- Paid placements, sponsorships and advertising, sponsored.
- Gifted products where you were sent something to review, sponsored. Google names this case specifically.
- Comments and forum posts on your own site, ugc. Most platforms do this automatically.
- User-submitted profiles and listings, ugc, since you cannot vouch for what people add.
What You Should Not Nofollow
Ordinary editorial links to sources you cite. Linking out to good sources is normal, useful for readers, and does not cost you anything meaningful.
The practice of nofollowing every outbound link to hoard PageRank was called sculpting, and Google stopped it working in 2009. It has not worked for over fifteen years, and it still gets recommended.
Your own internal links should never be nofollowed. If you do not want a page indexed, use noindex on the page itself. We covered how many outbound links a page should carry, and how to mark them, in a separate guide.
Finding the Nofollow Links You Already Have
Most sites have more than they realise, and some of them are worth acting on.
In a backlink tool, filter your referring domains by link type. Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz all let you separate followed from nofollowed, and the nofollow list is usually the one nobody has ever read.
Two things to look for in it:
- Pages sending actual traffic. Cross-check the nofollow list against referral traffic in your analytics. A nofollow link that sends visitors every month is a relationship worth maintaining, whatever its attribute says.
- Mentions that could reasonably be followed. If a genuine editorial article nofollowed you by template rather than by policy, a polite note sometimes gets it changed. It costs one email.
Search Console will not help here, since its Links report does not distinguish followed from nofollowed. That is a common misconception worth knowing before you go looking.
How to Check Whether a Link Is Nofollow
Three ways, from quickest to most thorough.
- Right-click the link and choose Inspect. Look at the anchor tag for a rel attribute. This takes five seconds and needs nothing installed.
- View the page source and search for the destination URL, then read the surrounding tag.
- Use a browser extension that highlights nofollow links on the page, which is faster when you are auditing many links at once.
One caution worth knowing: a link inserted by JavaScript may not appear in the raw source. If a page uses heavy scripting, check the rendered HTML through Inspect rather than View Source.
The Short Version
- Nofollow links do not pass ranking credit, and you should plan on that basis.
- Since 2020 it is a hint, so Google may use them anyway, in ways nobody outside Google can measure.
- They still bring traffic, keep your profile natural, lead to followed links, and feed AI citations.
- They cannot realistically hurt you, so disavowing them is wasted effort.
- On your own site, mark paid links sponsored and user content ugc, and leave editorial links alone.
- Judge any link by whether a real person will click it, not by its attribute.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do nofollow links help SEO?
Not directly, since they do not pass ranking credit the way followed links do. They help indirectly by sending referral traffic, keeping your backlink profile looking natural, leading to followed links from people who found you, and appearing on the community platforms that AI answers cite heavily. Plan as though they pass nothing and treat anything more as a bonus.
Is nofollow still a directive or a hint?
A hint. Google announced the change in September 2019, effective for crawling and indexing immediately and for ranking from March 2020. Google may take a nofollow link into account if it judges it useful, but it has never said how often that happens or how much weight it carries.
What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?
They mark different reasons for not passing credit. Nofollow is the general attribute, sponsored is for paid or compensated links including affiliate links and gifted products, and ugc is for links inside user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. They can be combined, and Google treats all three as reasons not to pass ranking credit normally.
Can nofollow links hurt my rankings?
Effectively no. They pass no ranking credit, so spam nofollow links pointed at your site are not damaging you, and Google ignores junk links routinely because otherwise competitors could harm each other. You almost certainly do not need to disavow them, since Google treats the disavow tool as something for sites with a manual action rather than routine maintenance.
Should I nofollow my affiliate links?
Yes, and mark them sponsored specifically. Google’s spam policies treat unmarked links exchanged for money or goods as a link scheme, which includes affiliate links and products sent to you for review. Marking them keeps the placement entirely legitimate.
Should I nofollow my outbound links to save PageRank?
No. That practice was called PageRank sculpting and Google stopped it working in 2009. Linking out to genuine sources is normal and useful for readers, and withholding those links gains you nothing.
Do nofollow links increase Domain Authority or Domain Rating?
No. Ahrefs Domain Rating ignores nofollow, sponsored and ugc links entirely, and Moz Domain Authority is calculated from followed links only. A hundred nofollow links will not move either score. It is also the wrong measure, since Google does not calculate or use either metric. Judge nofollow links on referral traffic, brand searches and whether they later led to a followed link.
Do social media links help SEO?
Not directly. Almost every link on a social platform is nofollow, so they pass no ranking credit and never have. What they do is distribute your content to people who might link to it from somewhere that does pass credit, and repeated exposure tends to raise branded searches. Treat social as distribution rather than link building.
How do I check if a link is nofollow?
Right-click the link, choose Inspect, and look for a rel attribute on the anchor tag. You can also view the page source and search for the destination URL, or use a browser extension that highlights nofollow links. If the page relies on JavaScript, check the rendered HTML through Inspect rather than View Source, since scripted links may not appear in the raw source.