Guide
Dofollow vs nofollow, and why nofollow is not a bad link
There is no such thing as a dofollow attribute. Dofollow describes what is absent: a link with no rel telling search engines to discount it. That one fact clears up most of the confusion in this subject, and the rest of it comes from treating nofollow as damage when it is usually just a fact.
What the markup actually looks like
An ordinary link is already dofollow. Nothing needs adding:
<a href="https://yoursite.com">Your product</a>
A link that asks search engines not to pass credit says so explicitly:
<a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">Your product</a>
Two more tokens do the same job with a reason attached. ugc marks user-generated content, comments and forum posts.sponsored marks paid placement. For whether the link passes credit, all three behave alike, and a checker that only looks for nofollow will call a ugc link dofollow, which is wrong in the direction that flatters you.
The whole rule
No rel, or a rel without nofollow, ugc or sponsored, is dofollow. Anything else is not. There is no third state and no partial credit.
Nofollow is not a bad backlink
This is worth saying loudly, because the industry has trained people to read nofollow as a wasted link, and acting on that belief costs real opportunities.
- It sends visitors. A person clicking through cannot tell what the rel said. A nofollow link on a page people actually read is worth more than a dofollow link on a page nobody visits.
- It is a hint, not a rule. Google described the attribute as a hint for ranking purposes some years ago, which means it is not guaranteed to be ignored.
- A natural profile is full of them. Social posts, comments, forums and much of the press are nofollow by default. A backlink profile with none of them looks less natural, not more.
So refusing a listing, a mention or a community post because the link is nofollow is usually the wrong call. The right question is what it cost you.
When nofollow does matter: the trade, not the link
There is one case where nofollow should change your decision, and it is about price rather than quality. If a directory asks for a badge on your homepage in exchange for the listing, you are paying a permanent slot on your most valuable page. Getting a nofollow link back for that is a bad trade, and usually an avoidable one, because the same directory often has a free lane that gives exactly the same link.
That is the entire scope of the complaint. On a one-way link that cost you nothing but a form, nofollow is a fact about the link, not a fault in it. The trade side has its own guide, including why the limit on swaps is a ratio rather than a count.
Dofollow does not mean it counts
Here is the part most explainers of this topic never reach. Reading the rel answers one third of the question. Two page-level conditions decide the rest, and either one makes a perfectly good dofollow link worth nothing:
- The page must be indexable. A noindex means Google drops the page from its index, and a link on a page that is not in the index has nothing to pass from. This is the most convincing false win in the whole subject, because every tool that reads only rel reports it as a success. Check for noindex.
- The page must be crawlable. A path disallowed in robots.txt is never fetched, so the link on it is never read. Check robots.txt.
Our checker reads the rel and the page indexability together, because answering only the first is how a link that passes nothing gets recorded as a win. Read a page properly, no account needed.
The case a rel cannot describe
One more thing worth knowing before you audit anything. Some sites do not link to you directly at all: the button points at their own counter URL, which redirects onward to you. The anchor looks clean, the rel is empty, and whether anything survives the hop depends on what the redirect itself carries.
A tool reading only the anchor will call that link dofollow, or miss it entirely and call the page linkless. Neither is right. Following the chain is the only way to see it.
Questions people actually ask
What is a dofollow backlink?
A link with no rel attribute telling search engines to discount it. There is no dofollow value you can write in HTML: the word describes the absence of nofollow, ugc or sponsored, which is why an ordinary link in an ordinary paragraph is already dofollow. If a tool reports a link as dofollow, it is reporting that none of those tokens were present.
What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow?
One asks search engines to consider the link when ranking the target, the other asks them not to. Both are real links: a visitor clicking them cannot tell the difference, they send the same traffic, and they appear identically on the page. The distinction only exists for search engines, and only in one direction.
Is a nofollow backlink useless?
No, and treating it that way is one of the more expensive mistakes in this subject. It sends real visitors, who are the point of a link in the first place, and Google has said it treats nofollow as a hint rather than an instruction, so it is not guaranteed to be discarded either. A healthy backlink profile is naturally full of them, and a profile with none looks stranger than one with many.
When is nofollow actually a problem?
When you paid something permanent for it. Trading a slot on your homepage for a badge, and getting a nofollow link back, is a bad trade rather than a bad link: the same directory usually offers a free listing that gives the same result without the slot. On a one-way link that cost nothing, nofollow is simply a fact about that link, not a fault.
What do ugc and sponsored mean?
They are more specific versions of the same signal, introduced so publishers can say why a link is not an endorsement. ugc marks user-generated content like comments and forum posts; sponsored marks paid placements. For the purpose of whether the link passes credit, all three behave the same way, which is why a checker should read all three rather than only nofollow.
Can I see if a link is dofollow without a tool?
Yes: view the page source and read the rel attribute on the anchor. A tool matters when the page builds its links with JavaScript, when the link is one of hundreds, or when you want to check the other things that decide whether a dofollow link is worth anything, which is where most manual checks stop too early.
If a link is dofollow, does it definitely count?
No, and this is the gap almost every guide leaves. A dofollow link on a page carrying a noindex, or on a path blocked in robots.txt, passes nothing, because Google either drops the page or never fetches it. Reading the rel alone answers a third of the question and it is the third most tools stop at.
A rel you read once is a rel that was true once.
Directories rebuild templates, tighten rel attributes and add noindex to listing pages without announcing any of it. ShipDR reads the rel and the page conditions together on every listing you track, on a schedule, and tells you the day one of them changes.
- Every listing rechecked on a schedule, not once
- Live, dofollow and indexable, read from the page itself
- Told the day a backlink drops or flips
Adding a website and charting its Domain Rating is free, no card. The backlink engine is $10 once, per website, with no subscription.