Nofollow Link

A nofollow link includes the rel='nofollow' attribute, which tells search engine crawlers not to pass PageRank or link equity to the linked page. Google introduced nofollow in 2005 to combat comment spam—if bloggers could mark user-submitted links as nofollow, spammers had less incentive to flood comment sections with links. Nofollow links are everywhere: Wikipedia links, most social media links, press release sites, forums, and many news publications add nofollow to external links. This doesn't mean they're worthless—they can drive real referral traffic and contribute to a natural link profile. In 2019, Google refined the system by adding rel='sponsored' for paid links and rel='ugc' for user-generated content, treating nofollow as a 'hint' rather than a hard directive. In practice, Google may still count some nofollow links as signals. For SEO strategy: pursue dofollow links primarily, but don't dismiss nofollow opportunities from high-traffic, authoritative sites. A nofollow link from a major publication still builds brand awareness, drives traffic, and contributes to a natural-looking link profile that's harder to penalize.

• 1Wikipedia adds nofollow to all external links
• 2Twitter and LinkedIn links are nofollow by default