What is a Nofollow Link?

A nofollow link is a hyperlink that includes a small piece of code telling search engines not to pass any ranking credit to the page being linked to. In plain terms, it's a link that says "I'm pointing here, but don't count this as a vote of confidence."

When websites link to each other normally, those links act as endorsements in Google's eyes. They pass what's called link equity, which helps the linked page rank better in search results. A nofollow link opts out of that process. The visitor can still click it and reach the destination, but Google doesn't treat it as a trust signal.

The nofollow attribute was introduced by Google back in 2005, mainly to fight comment spam. People were flooding blog comment sections with links just to game search rankings, and nofollow gave website owners a way to link out without handing over ranking power. Social media platforms, Wikipedia, and most user-generated content sections use nofollow by default for the same reason.

For small business owners, this comes up most often when thinking about backlinks and whether they all carry the same value. They don't. A nofollow link from a major news site is still worth having for visibility and traffic, but it won't move the needle on your rankings the way a regular followed link would.

That said, nofollow links are not worthless. They bring real visitors, they build brand awareness, and a natural backlink profile actually includes a mix of both followed and nofollow links. A website with only followed links can look suspicious to Google, so having some nofollow links in the mix is completely normal and healthy.

If you're just starting to learn about how links affect your site, it's worth understanding what a backlink actually is before going too deep into the followed versus nofollow distinction. Once that foundation is clear, the difference becomes much easier to act on.

The short version is this: chase followed links for SEO value, but don't ignore nofollow opportunities either. Visibility is visibility, and not every win has to show up in a rankings report.