A nofollow link is a link carrying rel="nofollow", which tells search engines you do not vouch for the target and do not want to pass it ranking credit, and since March 1, 2020 Google treats that as a hint rather than a command. In 2026 Google Search Central recommends rel="sponsored" for paid links, rel="ugc" for comments and forum posts, and nofollow only when neither fits. Google’s own Link best practices page adds a line most guides skip: use nofollow only when you do not trust the source, “and not for every external link on your site.”
What does a nofollow link do in 2026?
A nofollow link asks Google not to treat the link as an endorsement and not to crawl through it, but Google may set the request aside. A September 10, 2019 Google Search Central blog post by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes moved sponsored, ugc and nofollow to a hint model for ranking, and nofollow became a crawling and indexing hint on March 1, 2020.
Before that, the rule was absolute. Nofollow arrived in 2005 to fight blog comment spam, and Google did not count a nofollowed link as a signal at all. The 2019 post explains the change: links carry useful information, such as anchor words, and ignoring them meant losing it. It also says Google would generally still not consider these links for ranking.
Two practical consequences follow. First, nofollow does not hide a page. Google’s “Qualify your outbound links” documentation says linked pages may still be crawled if Google finds them through sitemaps or links from other sites. To keep a page out of search, Google points you to the noindex rule. Second, old markup does not need fixing. The 2019 post says there is “absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have.”
The WHATWG HTML Standard, the spec browsers build from, defines the keyword the same way: nofollow indicates that the link is not endorsed by the page’s author or publisher, or that it was included mainly because of a commercial relationship. Browsers do nothing different with it. It is a note for crawlers.
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How do you check if a link is nofollow?
Inspect the link and read its rel attribute. If nofollow, sponsored or ugc appears inside rel, Google treats the link as qualified. Then check the page head for a robots meta tag, because a page-level nofollow covers every link on the page even when the links themselves look clean.
Here is the method, in order:
- Right-click the link in Chrome, Edge or Firefox and choose Inspect. The developer tools highlight the
<a>element. - Read the
relvalue. Google accepts several values separated by spaces or commas, sorel="ugc nofollow"andrel="ugc,nofollow"both count, according to its outbound links documentation. Values such asnoopenerandnoreferrerare browser security settings and say nothing about ranking. - View the page source and search for
name="robots"orname="googlebot". Google’s robots meta tag documentation defines a page-levelnofollowas “Do not follow the links on this page,” andnoneas noindex plus nofollow. - Open the Network tab and check the response headers for
X-Robots-Tag. Google documents that the same rules can be sent there, for exampleX-Robots-Tag: googlebot: nofollow. - Compare the raw source with what Inspect shows. Some sites add rel values with JavaScript after the page loads.
A link with no rel value and no page-level rule is a normal link, and Google says regular links need no rel attribute at all.
When should you use nofollow, sponsored or ugc?
Use sponsored for anything you were paid or compensated for, ugc for links your users post, and nofollow for links you do not want to vouch for that fit neither box. Google Search Central’s “Qualify your outbound links” page, last updated December 10, 2025, sets out all three, and Google’s spam policies explain the stakes.
| Attribute | What it signals | When to use it | Our take |
|---|---|---|---|
rel="sponsored" | Ad, sponsorship or other compensation | Paid placements, affiliate links, gifted product reviews | Google’s preferred label for any paid link. Nofollow is still accepted |
rel="ugc" | Link came from user-generated content | Blog comments, forum posts, community Q&A | The default for anything your users can type into |
rel="nofollow" | No endorsement, do not crawl through | Sources you do not trust, when the other two do not fit | Use sparingly, never as a blanket rule |
Combined, e.g. rel="ugc nofollow" | Both hints at once | Compatibility with services that only read nofollow | Fine to stack. Google accepts space or comma lists |
| No rel value | A normal editorial link | Sources you cite and trust | The right call for most links you write yourself |
1. Sponsored: paid, gifted or affiliate links
The 2019 announcement defines sponsored as links created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements. Google’s spam policies, last updated August 28, 2026, list buying links, exchanging goods or services for links, and sending someone a product in exchange for a link as link spam. The same section says paid links are not a violation as long as they carry nofollow or sponsored. Google prefers sponsored but treats the two the same for this purpose.
2. UGC: comments, forums and community posts
Google recommends ugc for comments and forum posts, and says you may drop the value for trustworthy contributors who have posted quality content over time. WordPress already handles the default. Since version 5.3, its wp_rel_ugc() function adds rel="nofollow ugc" to links in comment text, and WordPress core marks a commenter’s website link as ugc external nofollow when it points off site.
3. Nofollow: links you do not want to vouch for
Google’s documentation says to use nofollow when the other values do not apply. Its Link best practices page gives an example: you want to rebut an article without lending it your site’s reputation. The same page warns against putting nofollow on every external link. For links inside your own site, Google says to use a robots.txt disallow rule rather than nofollow.
4. Page-level nofollow: the robots meta tag
A robots meta tag set to nofollow applies to every link on the page, and Google’s outbound links documentation notes this is the only form of nofollow it supports outside the <a> element. It suits a narrow set of pages whose links you never want followed. Use it rarely, because it also removes those links as a discovery path for Google.
How does Bing treat nofollow links?
Bing has not published a current rule. The Bing Webmaster Guidelines, now written to cover Bing search, Copilot and grounding results, do not mention nofollow, sponsored or ugc at all. They do list link buying, link spamming and private networks under “Link Schemes and Artificial Promotion,” and ask for standard <a href> links with relevant anchor text.
Bing’s robots meta tag help page lists noindex, noarchive, nocache, nosnippet and the max-snippet family, but no page-level nofollow. Its Link building page says Bing “can easily see a pattern” of paid links, again without naming a rel value.
What is known: Microsoft discourages links bought to move rankings. What is not documented: whether Bingbot honors rel="nofollow" as a directive, a hint, or not at all. We have not tested it. Follow Google’s markup rules, since no Bing document contradicts them.
Which major sites nofollow their outbound links?
Wikipedia does it on every external link, and WordPress does it on comments by default. Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia coordination site, states that external links on all Wikimedia wikis carry rel="nofollow", and that English Wikipedia switched it on for articles on January 20, 2007.
We checked the live source of Wikipedia’s World Wide Web Consortium article on October 10, 2026. Of its 89 outbound links, 87 carried rel="mw:ExtLink nofollow", and the two exceptions pointed to a Wikimedia-run map tool. A Wikipedia citation can still send readers and catch the eye of editors and journalists, but it is not an endorsement link in Google’s sense.
For Reddit, Medium and contributor sections on news sites such as Forbes, we did not find a primary document stating a policy. Third-party claims about them are often dated, and platforms change templates without notice. Run the five-step check above on the exact page you care about instead of trusting a list.
Press release wires fall under policy rather than templates. Google’s spam policies name links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites as an example of link spam. Our breakdown of how much link building costs walks through what that means when you pay for placements.
Do nofollow links still matter?
For ranking credit, usually no. Google’s 2019 post says it will generally treat nofollowed links as it did before and not consider them for ranking. They still matter in three other ways: referral traffic, discovery, and exposure on pages that people and AI tools read. The last one is a mechanism we have not tested.
Referral traffic is the plainest value. A link from a busy Wikipedia article or a popular forum thread sends people regardless of its rel value, because browsers ignore nofollow. Bing’s Link building page makes a similar point about bought links: they can bring direct traffic even when they are not a ranking play.
Discovery is a softer benefit. Since March 2020 nofollow is a crawl hint, so a nofollowed link may or may not lead Googlebot to your page, and Google does not say how often. Submit a sitemap instead of relying on them.
AI answers are the open question. Assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot read page text, so a brand named on a page they pull from could in principle surface in an answer whatever the link markup says. That is a mechanism, not a measured outcome. No engine documents whether rel values affect which sources an assistant cites, and we have not run a controlled test. Our post on whether backlinks matter for AI search covers what the evidence does and does not show.
The practical takeaway: earn mentions on pages people read, accept the nofollow link when it comes with real readers, and do not pay for links that pass ranking credit. Editorial coverage, the kind Subscribe PR pursues through its services, carries whatever rel value the publisher sets, which no one outside the newsroom controls. If you are building links on purpose, our guide on how to get backlinks lays out methods that stay inside Google’s policies.
FAQ
Does a nofollow link help SEO?
Not directly in most cases. Google said in its September 2019 Search Central post that it will generally not consider nofollowed links for ranking, even under the hint model. They can still help indirectly by sending referral visitors, by putting your name in front of writers who may link to you later, and by giving Google a possible path to a page. Treat them as traffic and awareness, not ranking credit.
Is nofollow the same as noindex?
No. Nofollow is about links: it asks search engines not to follow or credit a link, or every link on a page when set in a robots meta tag. Noindex is about the page itself and asks Google to leave it out of results. Google’s outbound links documentation notes that a nofollowed page can still be crawled through sitemaps or other links, so use noindex, with crawling allowed, to keep a page out.
Should I make all my external links nofollow?
No. Google’s Link best practices page says to use nofollow only when you do not trust the source, and not for every external link on your site. Linking normally to the sources you cite is how the web is meant to work. Mark paid links as sponsored, user-submitted links as ugc, and leave your own editorial links to trusted sources without any rel value.
Should affiliate links use nofollow or sponsored?
Use sponsored. Google’s 2019 announcement defines sponsored as links created through advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements, which covers affiliate commissions. Google’s spam policies say paid links are acceptable as long as they carry nofollow or sponsored, and Google prefers sponsored. You can combine the two, as in rel="sponsored nofollow", if another service you rely on only reads nofollow.
Are Wikipedia links nofollow?
Yes, for external links. Meta-Wiki states that external links on all Wikimedia wikis carry rel="nofollow", and English Wikipedia turned it on for articles on January 20, 2007. In our check of a live article on October 10, 2026, 87 of 89 outbound links carried the attribute. A Wikipedia citation can still bring readers and visibility, but it does not pass ranking credit the way an editorial link would.
Does Bing follow nofollow links?
Bing does not say. Its current Webmaster Guidelines, which cover Bing search and Copilot, do not mention nofollow, sponsored or ugc, and its robots meta tag help page does not list a nofollow rule. The guidelines do prohibit link buying and link spamming. Until Microsoft publishes a rule, use Google’s markup and treat any confident claim about Bing’s handling as unverified.
The short answer
Think of rel values as labels, not locks. Nofollow, sponsored and ugc tell Google why a link exists, and Google decides how far to trust the label. Mark paid links sponsored, user links ugc, and save nofollow for the rare link you would rather not vouch for. Leave everything else alone, and check any link that matters to you in the source, because the rel value on the live page is the only answer that counts.
Ranking credit is one way to be found. Being named on the pages people and assistants read is another. Not sure whether AI search mentions your business at all? See where you stand with a free audit.
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