What is a nofollow link, and how is it different from a dofollow link?
A dofollow link passes ranking credit from one site to another. A nofollow link carries a small piece of code asking Google not to count it that way. There is no dofollow attribute: a link is dofollow simply because nobody marked it nofollow. Most free directory links you will find are nofollow.
Say you have found a free directory with an impressive authority score, and you are about to spend twenty minutes on its submission form. Whether the finished listing can help your rankings comes down to one word hidden in the link's code, and you can read that word in ten seconds before you start.
If you are new to SEO and submitting to directories because you want to rank higher, this is the first thing to check. A nofollow link cannot raise your rankings, however strong the site looks or however high its authority score is. It can still do other useful jobs, and for some businesses those jobs are worth more than the ranking boost people are chasing.
So treat the attribute as a sorting step. Check it before you fill in the form, then decide whether you still want the listing, and for which reason.
What is the nofollow attribute?
It is a single word inside a link's HTML that asks search engines not to treat the link as an endorsement. Every link on a web page is a short piece of HTML, and in its plainest form it names the address it points at and the words the reader clicks on.
A link can also carry a `rel` attribute, which describes the relationship between the page and the place it links to. When a link carries `rel="nofollow"`, the publisher is telling search engines that they do not vouch for the destination and do not want the link counted in its favour.
You cannot see any of this on the screen. A nofollow link is the same colour as any other link, it goes to the same place, and a person clicking it would never know the difference.
Why does nofollow exist?
It was created to stop comment spam. Google, Yahoo and MSN introduced the attribute together in January 2005, at a time when anyone could drop a link into a blog comment or a forum signature, and because search engines counted those links, people did it at scale.
Marking those links nofollow took away the reward. The link still worked for a human reader, but it was no longer worth spamming for.
Directories have the same problem, because a directory is a page where strangers add their own links. Most free ones mark every outbound listing nofollow for exactly that reason, and a few charge a fee for a dofollow link, which should make you cautious. Google's link spam policy names paying for links as a violation, and it applies to the site buying the link as well as the site selling it.
What does a nofollow link still do for you?
Quite a lot, as long as rankings were not the only thing you wanted. A nofollow link still sends you visitors, and a visitor from a directory people actually browse is worth more than a ranking signal from one nobody reads.
It still puts your name, address and phone number somewhere consistent, which is the whole point of a local citation and has nothing to do with link credit. It still helps your site get discovered, because a search engine that finds your address on a listing page can go and visit it.
And it is still a public record that your business exists, in a place a customer might look. None of that needs the link to be counted.
So a nofollow link does have value. It is usually a different kind of value from the one most people are submitting for, and it helps to know that before you start.
What changed in 2019?
Google loosened the rule slightly. On 10 September 2019 it announced two new values alongside nofollow: `rel="sponsored"` for paid or affiliate links, and `rel="ugc"` for user generated content such as comments and forum posts. In the same announcement it said nofollow would become a hint rather than a strict instruction, so Google may now take some signal from a nofollow link instead of ignoring it completely. That applied to ranking straight away, and to crawling and indexing from 1 March 2020.
It is easy to read too much into this. A hint is not a promise, and Google has never said how often it acts on one, so there is nothing you can plan around. The sensible approach is to treat a nofollow link as passing nothing, and to treat anything it does pass as a bonus you did not pay for.
How to check this yourself
You can check the Link type column on this site for yourself, and it is worth doing at least once. All you need is the browser you already have and about a minute. Use a live listing rather than the submission page, because the two are often different.
- Find a listing that already exists on the directory. Search the directory for any business, or open one of the example listings on its home page. The submission form tells you very little, while the finished listing shows you what you will actually get.
- Right click the link that points at that business's website and choose Inspect rather than View Source. Many directories build their pages with JavaScript, so the original source can be missing the very link you want, while Inspect shows what the browser actually ended up with.
- Read the highlighted line of HTML and look for `rel` inside the anchor tag. If you see `rel="nofollow"`, `rel="ugc"` or `rel="sponsored"`, the link is not passing credit. If there is no `rel` at all, it is a dofollow link.
- Check that the link goes straight to the business's site. Some directories send outbound links through a redirect on their own domain, which gives you no link at all, whatever the `rel` says. If the address in the HTML is not the business website, this is what has happened.
- Repeat the check on a second listing before you decide anything. Plenty of directories mark free listings nofollow and remove it on paid ones, so a single sample can give you the wrong answer.
Step four is the one most people miss, and it explains how a link can be dofollow and still do nothing. If you find an entry on this site where your result differs from our table, tell us and we will recheck it and publish the correction.
Words used above, in plain English
- rel attribute
- A piece of code inside a link that describes how the page relates to the place it points at. `nofollow`, `sponsored` and `ugc` are all values of it.
- anchor text
- The words you click on. On a directory listing this is usually your business name or your bare web address, and you rarely get to choose it.
- crawl
- When a search engine visits a page and reads it. A page can be crawled and still never show up in search results.
- index
- When a search engine keeps a page after crawling it, so the page can appear in results. A directory listing that is crawled but never indexed does nothing for you, which is why we give indexing so much weight.
What this does not mean
Dofollow is not automatically good, and nofollow is not automatically bad. A dofollow link from a directory nobody visits, on a listing page that never gets indexed, is worth less than a nofollow link on a page real customers browse. The attribute tells you what kind of value a link can carry, but not how much.
You also should not go hunting for dofollow directories as a goal in itself. Sites picked only because their links are dofollow tend to be sites with weak submission standards, and that is a pattern to steer clear of.
And you cannot safely pay your way around it. A directory selling dofollow links is asking you to break the same policy it is already breaking. The link may work for a while, but it is never an asset you own.
Questions people ask about this
Is there a rel="dofollow" attribute?
No, and there never has been. Dofollow is a word the SEO community uses for a link with no nofollow on it. If a directory advertises `rel="dofollow"` in its own marketing, it is worth being a little wary of what else it tells you.
Are nofollow links a waste of time?
Not if you want the traffic, the consistent business details or the discovery. They are only a waste of time if higher rankings were your sole reason for submitting, which is why we show the link type in the table so you know before you start.
Can a directory change the attribute later?
Yes, and when they do it is usually in the direction you would not want. That is why every entry on this site shows the date it was checked, and why we recheck entries instead of relying on what we found last year.
Should I ask a directory to remove the nofollow?
No. If the directory agreed, you would be arranging special link treatment, which is exactly what Google's link spam policy covers. Asking also makes you look like someone chasing links rather than a business that wants to be listed.