Nofollow link
Also called: rel=nofollow, rel=sponsored, rel=ugc
Updated November 9, 2026
A nofollow link is a link marked rel=nofollow, telling Google you'd rather not associate your site with the linked page or have it crawled from your site. Sponsored and ugc are variants that also say why.
Why it matters on a small site
Most links need nothing: Google says an ordinary link you are happy for it to follow needs no rel value at all. The values are for the few links where you want to tell Google your relationship with the page, and on a small business site those are mostly paid ones.
Google's spam policies count buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, but accept paid links marked nofollow or sponsored. So if a supplier pays for a mention on your blog, that link needs one of them. Offers of cheap backlinks are the kind of deal our guide to what SEO should cost warns about.
The three values
You can combine values on one link, separated by a space or a comma. Google used to recommend nofollow for paid links and still accepts it there, but prefers sponsored.
| Value | Use it for |
|---|---|
| sponsored | Ads and paid placements, usually called paid links |
| ugc | Links in what your visitors write, such as comments and forum posts |
| nofollow | Other links you'd rather Google didn't associate with your site or crawl from it |
How to check yours
- Right click a link on your page and choose Inspect. The rel value, if there is one, appears next to the link's address.
- In your website builder or blog editor, open the settings of that link. If it offers a nofollow or sponsored option, that is where you set it.
- Go through paid mentions, partner pages and comment sections first: those are the links Google asks you to mark.
Mistakes to avoid
- Putting nofollow on links between your own pages. To stop Google fetching one of your pages, Google says to use robots.txt; to keep it out of results, noindex.
- Expecting nofollow to keep the linked page out of Google. It can still be found through sitemaps or links from other sites.
Often confused with
- Noindex
Noindex keeps one of your own pages out of search results. Nofollow sits on a single link and says nothing about whether the page it points to may appear on Google.
Frequently asked questions
›Does Google ever follow nofollow links?
Generally not from your page. The linked page can still be crawled if Google finds it another way, such as a sitemap or a link from another site.
›Can I use sponsored and nofollow on the same link?
Yes. Google accepts several values on one link, separated by a space or a comma.
Read more
Sources
- Google Search Central Qualify your outbound links to Google
- Google Search Central Spam policies for Google web search