Dofollow vs Nofollow Links: What a Dofollow Link Is and How to Check
A dofollow link is an ordinary HTML link that search engines are free to follow and to count as a signal for the page it points at. No attribute makes a link dofollow: a link is followed by default, until its rel attribute says nofollow, ugc or sponsored, or something on the page or along its path stops a crawler from reaching you.
So dofollow vs nofollow comes down to a few words of markup and a few places to look. Below: what Google says each rel value means, the HTML for each kind of link, what dofollow and nofollow links do for SEO, how to check if a link is dofollow when the rel is not enough and how the 190 directories in our catalog table, as exported on 23 October 2026, split between the two, badge rules included.
A dofollow link carries no nofollow, ugc or sponsored in its rel and points straight at your domain from a page crawlers may read. There is no rel="dofollow" value: Google's own example of a regular link has no rel at all. To check a link, inspect the anchor, read its rel and its href, then look for a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header on the page. In our catalog 119 of 190 directories are recorded as dofollow, and a badge rule applies to 31 of them. CurlShip charges $30 once to make its link dofollow without the badge. Submitator's $29 covers 30 directories you choose, and we install and look after every badge they ask for. The whole list is in our catalog table.
What is a dofollow link?
Search engines find pages by following links, and they read links as signals about the pages they point at. A dofollow link is one that nothing holds back from either. Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links describes it without using the word: "For regular links that you expect Google to fetch and parse without any qualifications, you don't need to add a rel attribute." Its example of such a link is an anchor with an href and nothing else.
That is the whole dofollow link meaning. So what is dofollow and nofollow? A link without a qualification and a link with one. "Dofollow" is SEO shorthand for a link without nofollow, ugc or sponsored, and "nofollow" has become shorthand for all three. What are dofollow links good for? They are the links a ranking system may count, and they are what the Domain Rating in our catalog is built from: Ahrefs says a site that links to you through nofollow links alone will not raise your DR.
Is there a rel="dofollow"?
No. The values Google documents for links are sponsored, ugc and nofollow, and dofollow is not among them, nor is it a value the HTML standard defines. A link marked rel="dofollow" is followed for the same reason an unmarked one is: nothing in it says otherwise. The same holds for noopener and noreferrer, which you will see on links that open in a new tab. They are browser security values, and a link carrying them is still followed.
Directory listings show both shapes. On CtrlAlt.CC, each listing links the product it describes once, with no rel attribute at all. On Launch List, the Visit Website button carries rel="noopener noreferrer". Both are dofollow links.
Dofollow external links, seen from both ends
Dofollow external links are the followed links a page gives to other domains. From the receiving end, each one is a dofollow backlink: a followed link from another site to yours. The site that publishes the link decides which kind it gives, for every link on every page, and some directories decide it listing by listing, as the badge section below shows.
Nofollow, ugc and sponsored: what each value tells Google
Google reads three values in a link's rel attribute, and its documentation gives each a job.
sponsoredmarks advertisements and paid placements. Google still accepts nofollow on those links, and prefers sponsored.ugcmarks links inside user-generated content, such as comments and forum posts.nofollowcovers the rest: "Use the nofollow value when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site."
One link can carry several values, separated by spaces or commas, so rel="ugc nofollow" is valid. Links with any of them, in Google's words, "will generally not be followed", and the pages they point at can still be found another way, through sitemaps or links from other sites.
What is a nofollow link?
A nofollow link is one with rel nofollow in its markup, written rel="nofollow" alone or beside other values. For a visitor it works like any other link: it is clickable, it opens the page and it can send traffic. What changes is the message to search engines, which Google's 2019 definition puts this way: "Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don't want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page."
Nofollow has been a hint since 2019
On 10 September 2019 Google changed what the value means. Its announcement, by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes, opens the change with "When nofollow was introduced, Google would not count any link marked this way as a signal to use within our search algorithms." and follows it with "This has now changed." From that day nofollow, ugc and sponsored were hints for ranking that Google weighs with other signals, and on 1 March 2020, the date the post set, nofollow became a hint for crawling and indexing as well.
A hint promises nothing either way. The same post says of ugc and nofollow links, "We'll generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes." Plan on a nofollow link passing no ranking credit, and treat anything more as a bonus.
Ugc vs sponsored vs nofollow on live pages
All three turn up on launch boards and directories, each for its own reason. Product Hunt marks the website link on a launch as user content: all 17 launch pages read for our guide carried rel="noreferrer noopener ugc". Hacker News puts nofollow on a new submission, and on the stories we read it came off at about twenty points: none of the 98 above that line carried it. Paid slots carry sponsored, and Neeed Directory's pricing page explains why: "Ad placements link with rel="sponsored nofollow", as Google's guidelines require for paid placement."
Nofollow vs dofollow links, ugc and sponsored compared
| Link | Markup | Meant for | What Google does with it | Brings visitors |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dofollow | No rel, or noopener noreferrer | Regular links | Fetches and parses it like any link | |
| Nofollow | rel="nofollow" | Links you do not vouch for | A hint, generally not counted for ranking | |
| Ugc | rel="ugc" | Comments, forum posts, user content | A hint, generally treated like nofollow | |
| Sponsored | rel="sponsored" | Ads and paid placements | A hint, preferred to nofollow for paid links | |
| Page-level nofollow | Robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag | Every link on one page | Asked not to follow the links on the page |
Meanings and treatment per Google Search Central, read on 27 October 2026: "Qualify your outbound links to Google" (last updated 10 December 2025), the Search Central Blog post of 10 September 2019 by Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes that introduced ugc and sponsored and the robots meta tag specification (last updated 24 March 2026). Since that post nofollow, ugc and sponsored have been hints for ranking, and nofollow a hint for crawling and indexing since 1 March 2020. noopener and noreferrer are browser values that are not among the values Google lists for qualifying a link. Ahrefs' line on nofollow links and DR is from its Domain Rating explainer, read the same day. Directory examples come from our guides: CtrlAlt.CC (a random sample of 80 listings out of 4,867 on 2 September 2026, and six product pages read again on 27 October 2026), Launch List (16 product pages rendered in a browser, 17 September 2026), Product Hunt (17 launch pages, 18 October 2026) and Hacker News (178 external stories on eight listing pages, 15 September 2026). Neeed Directory's line on ad placements is from its pricing page, read on 27 October 2026.
Dofollow link HTML, and the code for every other kind
How to make a dofollow link: write a plain anchor with an href to the page and keep nofollow, ugc and sponsored out of its rel. Here is the dofollow link HTML code beside each of the other kinds, written the way you would put them on your own site.
<!-- Dofollow: a plain link, no rel needed -->
<a href="https://example.com/">Example</a>
<!-- Still dofollow: noopener and noreferrer are browser security values -->
<a href="https://example.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Example</a>
<!-- Nofollow: a link you do not vouch for -->
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="nofollow">Example</a>
<!-- ugc: a link inside a comment, forum post or other user content -->
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="ugc">Example</a>
<!-- sponsored: an ad or a paid placement -->
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="sponsored">Example</a>
<!-- Two values at once, space- or comma-separated -->
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="ugc nofollow">Example</a>To make a link dofollow, delete nofollow, ugc and sponsored from its rel and keep noopener or noreferrer if the link opens in a new tab. On a site you do not control, a directory listing for one, that edit is theirs to make, which is why the checks further down matter more than the markup you send them.
Page-level nofollow: the robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag
A page can also withdraw every link on it at once, whatever each anchor says. Google's robots rules include nofollow, defined in one line: "Do not follow the links on this page." The rule can sit in a meta tag or in the HTTP response, since "Any rule that can be used in a robots meta tag can also be specified as an X-Robots-Tag." The rule none means noindex and nofollow together.
<!-- In the page: no link on it is followed -->
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
<!-- The same rule, for Google's crawler alone -->
<meta name="googlebot" content="nofollow">
<!-- In the HTTP response, for the same page -->
X-Robots-Tag: nofollowDofollow vs nofollow links for SEO
The difference between dofollow and nofollow links for SEO is what each can carry. A dofollow link can pass ranking credit to the page it points at, it tells Google what that page is about through its anchor text and it gives a crawler a path to the page. That information is why Google stopped ignoring nofollow links in 2019. In its words: "Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at."
That is the importance of dofollow backlinks in SEO, and what people mean by dofollow SEO: they are the links a ranking system may count toward your pages, while a nofollow link's value is the people it sends. How many a page needs is set by the pages it has to beat, which our post on how many backlinks you need works through with real numbers.
Are nofollow links worth it?
Yes, for what they do carry. A nofollow link is a link people click, and on a busy page that is the point: a launch or a front-page thread sends visitors whatever the rel says, and some of those visitors write about you and link to you from their own sites with ordinary followed links. What a nofollow link does not reliably carry is ranking credit, so count it as traffic and discovery, and count your dofollow links on their own.
For a directory listing that makes two questions: does the listing send a followed link, and will the page holding it be crawled and indexed? Our post on what makes a directory link count goes through both, directory by directory.
How to check if a link is dofollow
Reading the rel answers the question for one anchor. A link can pass that and still give you nothing, so check five things, in this order. Each one works in an ordinary browser.
1. Check dofollow links in the page source
Open the page, view its source (Ctrl+U, or Option+Cmd+U on a Mac) and search for your domain. Each match inside an href is a link to you, so read the rel on that anchor: no rel, or noopener and noreferrer and nothing else, is dofollow; nofollow, ugc or sponsored, alone or with other values, is not. Read the anchor that points at you and not the page's other links. On Neeed Directory the sidebar ad on every listing page we read is nofollow sponsored, while the Visit Site button of a badge-verified listing is followed.
2. Inspect the rendered link in DevTools
Right-click the link and choose Inspect. DevTools shows the page after its scripts have run, which matters on sites that build their links in the browser. On Launch List the HTML the server sends holds no anchor to the listed product; the Visit Website button appears once the page renders, and it was followed on all 16 listings rendered for our guide. Google's link documentation covers the case: "Links are also crawlable when you use JavaScript to insert them into a page dynamically as long as it uses the HTML markup shown above." To list every link to your site with its rel in one go, use the console.
// Paste into the DevTools console on the page that links to you
console.table(
[...document.querySelectorAll('a[href*="example.com"]')].map((a) => ({
rel: a.rel || "(no rel)",
href: a.href,
})),
);3. Check that the href points at your domain
A clean rel on the wrong address is not a link to you. A directory can route its Visit button through a redirect on its own domain, and if its robots.txt disallows that path, the trail ends there for a crawler. Future Tools works this way: on 79 of the 80 tool pages we read, the anchors aimed at the listed tool point at an internal /go/ path with rel="noopener noreferrer", and its robots.txt says Disallow: /go/. A visitor who clicks lands on the tool; a crawler is told to stop. Hover the button: if the address in the status bar is the directory's own, open its /robots.txt.
4. Check the robots meta tag and the X-Robots-Tag header
Search the source for name="robots" and name="googlebot". A content value with nofollow or none withdraws every link on the page, and noindex asks for the page to be left out of results, which leaves a followed link on it worth little. Look past the head as well, because Google says it "will respect robots meta tags in the body section of an HTML document as well". Then check the response headers, in the Network tab or with one command:
curl -s -o /dev/null -D - https://example.com/your-listing | grep -i x-robots-tagNo output means no header. While you are on the listing page, read its canonical too, since a canonical pointing at another address tells search engines to treat this page as a copy: our link preview checker prints a page's canonical with its title and description.
5. Make sure it is a real link
Google follows links it can parse, and its documentation draws the line at the anchor element: "Google can't reliably extract URLs from <a> elements that don't have an href attribute or other tags that perform as links because of script events." A button that opens your site from a click handler, or a link that appears in a pop-up after a click, can send visitors and still give a crawler no address to follow. In DevTools the test is short: a link is an a element whose href holds your URL.
Once a link passes all five, what remains is the strength of the site it sits on. Our free Domain Rating checker reads any domain's DR from Ahrefs. The rating describes the linking site as a whole; the five checks tell you whether any of it reaches you.
Dofollow and nofollow across our catalog
For dofollow vs nofollow backlinks from directories, here is the split in our own catalog. Its table carries our admin's link type for each directory: 119 of the 190 directories it lists are dofollow, about 63%, 35 are nofollow and 36 have no type recorded yet. The badge rule splits them further. Of the 34 directories that ask for a badge, required or optional, 31 are dofollow, against 88 of the 156 that ask for none. The section after the table shows what that condition looks like on live listings.
Dofollow and nofollow links in our catalog, by badge rule
| Link type | All | Badge: Not needed | Badge: Optional, we handle it | Badge: Required, we handle it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dofollow | 119 | 88 | 9 | 22 |
| Nofollow | 35 | 32 | 2 | 1 |
| Not recorded | 36 | 36 | 0 | 0 |
| All directories | 190 | 156 | 11 | 23 |
Every row of our catalog table, exported from our production database on 23 October 2026: 190 directories, active and archived alike, the same rows the table on our where-to-submit page prints. Link type is our admin's record for each directory, and "not recorded" means none has been entered. On 8 rows the admin's record says dofollow where our guide to that directory measured its live listings passing no equity, Future Tools among them; the guides carry those measurements. 7 of the rows are directories whose guides say we do not submit there at present. The badge columns are each directory's own rule as our catalog records it.
Those are counts. The directories themselves, one row each with DR, link type and badge rule, are on our where-to-submit page, row by row, and the same list sorted by what each listing gives you has a post of its own.
Links that turn dofollow with a badge
On a badge directory the link type is a condition, not a constant. CurlShip states it in one sentence on its pricing page: "Free links are nofollow until you add the badge; paid tiers are dofollow with no badge." The four directories below show that split on their live listings: the free link is followed while their badge is on your site, and nofollow without it.
SubmitMySaas builds its pricing card around the badge. Under the free launch it says "Free links are followed while your homepage badge is verified." The $19 Premium launch lists "Website link marked as sponsored". There, paying buys priority placement, and the badge is what buys the followed link.
Neeed Directory sells both routes side by side. Its free card promises a "Dofollow backlink once the badge is verified", and its Premium card, $19 one-time, a "Permanent dofollow backlink, no badge needed". CurlShip's version is Bronze Lifetime at $30 once, and EasyLaunch sells a card reading "Dofollow · no badge". On those three, a badge and a payment buy the same followed link, and the directories have priced the difference themselves.
What the badge costs instead is upkeep. It has to sit on your site, in the HTML the directory's check reads, through every redesign, and the checks run: CurlShip's bot looks for its link every hour, and on Neeed one listing in our census had its badge revoked on 18 October 2026 and was live with a nofollow button five days later. Whether a badge that links back to the directory counts against you is a separate question, which our post on badges as link backs answers from Google's own policy.
Directories where a badge makes the link dofollow
| Directory | DR | Badge | Free, badge on your site | Free, no badge | Paying instead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neeed Directory | 74 | Optional, we handle it | Dofollow on 70 of 70 | Nofollow on 81 of 81 | Premium, $19 one-time: dofollow, no badge |
| EasyLaunch | 61 | Required, we handle it | Dofollow per its card; 373 of 387 listings followed | Nofollow; none of the 14 nofollow listings had the badge | A paid card: dofollow, no badge |
| SubmitMySaas | 59 | Optional, we handle it | Dofollow on 266 of 266 | Nofollow on 252 of 252 | Premium, $19 a launch: link marked sponsored |
| CurlShip | 49 | Optional, we handle it | Dofollow on 94 of 94 | Nofollow on 3,356 of 3,356 | Bronze Lifetime, $30 once: dofollow, no badge |
DR and the badge rule are our catalog's, from the export of 23 October 2026. The link cells read the rel on each listing's link to the listed product, from the censuses in our guides: Neeed Directory, 158 listing pages on 23 October 2026 (70 free listings with a verified badge followed, 81 without it nofollow; 6 Premium listings followed and one awaiting payment nofollow); EasyLaunch, all 387 listing pages on 28 September 2026 (373 followed and 14 nofollow, none of whose listed sites carried the EasyLaunch badge); SubmitMySaas, 671 launch pages on 23 October 2026, of which 529 could be joined to their launch records (266 free launches with the badge flag followed, 252 without it nofollow); CurlShip, all 3,463 listing pages on 25 September 2026 (94 free listings with the badge flag followed, 3,356 without it nofollow, 13 paid followed). Paid routes and quotes are from each directory's pricing page, read on 27 October 2026: CurlShip's Bronze Lifetime at $30 once, ex-VAT, Neeed Premium at $19 one-time and SubmitMySaas Premium at $19 a launch, whose card says "Website link marked as sponsored" and whose FAQ says links in paid launches are marked sponsored; the 11 Premium launches in the census of 23 October linked out followed. EasyLaunch's card text "Dofollow · no badge" is from its submission panel on 28 September 2026. CurlShip's hourly check is from its badge page and Neeed's revoked badge from the census of 23 October. Submitator submits to CurlShip, EasyLaunch and SubmitMySaas with their badges placed through our component, and to Neeed Directory with the badge or without it, as our founder has stated for each.
Their $30 skips the badge. Our $29 places it, on CurlShip and 29 more.
CurlShip's free link is nofollow until its badge is on your site. We install every badge your directories ask for and keep it live; you pick from 160+, 60 for $49, 100 for $79, one-time.
The badge sits on your site, the upkeep sits with us
That upkeep is the part Submitator takes on. A single component goes into your site once and renders whichever badge each directory in your plan asks for; we look after all of them from then on, so the condition each directory checks is still met after your next redesign, and you never ship a commit for a directory. We submit you to CurlShip, EasyLaunch and SubmitMySaas with their badges in place, and to Neeed Directory with its badge or without it.
The picking is yours: the dashboard lists every directory with its Domain Rating, and we write every directory its own description. Most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, every directory within 21 days at most. When a directory turns a submission down, by default you get one directory back to choose again, and a refund can be requested within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions in our terms.
Starter is $29 for 30 directories, Growth $49 for 60 and Scale $79 for 100, each paid once. The full catalog lists 160+ directories with the Domain Rating, link type and badge rule of each. If your product is an AI tool or a SaaS, start from AI tool directories or SaaS directories instead.
Sources for the checks above: Google Search Central's link documentation ("Make your links crawlable", last updated 10 December 2025) and robots meta tag specification (last updated 24 March 2026), both read on 27 October 2026. Future Tools: 80 of its 4,286 tool pages read for our guide on 10 September 2026, of which 79 route the tool link through /go/; its robots.txt, read again on 27 October 2026, still carries "Disallow: /go/". Neeed Directory's sidebar ad carried rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow sponsored" on all 158 listing pages of the census of 23 October 2026. Launch List: 16 product pages rendered in a browser on 17 September 2026.
FAQ
What is a dofollow backlink?
A link from another website to yours with no nofollow, ugc or sponsored in its rel, pointing straight at your domain from a page search engines may crawl. It is the kind of backlink a ranking system may count, and the kind Ahrefs counts toward Domain Rating. Directory listings are one source of them: 119 of the 190 directories in our catalog table are recorded as dofollow, 31 of them with a badge rule. We place every badge the directories you pick ask for and keep it live.
Is there a rel="dofollow" attribute?
No. The rel values Google documents for links are nofollow, ugc and sponsored, and dofollow is not one of them. A link is followed when none of those three is present, so rel="dofollow" changes nothing: the link was followed already. noopener and noreferrer are browser security values and leave a link followed as well.
What is the difference between nofollow, ugc and sponsored?
What each one says about the link. Google asks for sponsored on ads and paid placements and for ugc on links in user content, such as comments and forum posts. Nofollow is for the rest, when you would rather not be associated with the page you link to. Since 10 September 2019 all three are hints for ranking, and since 1 March 2020 nofollow is a hint for crawling and indexing too. One link can carry more than one, as in rel="ugc nofollow".
Do nofollow links help SEO?
Not reliably with rankings. Google treats nofollow as a hint and says it will generally not consider such links for ranking, and Ahrefs says nofollow links alone will not raise your Domain Rating. They help in other ways: people click them, and some of the visitors a launch or a busy thread sends go on to link to you from their own sites with ordinary followed links. Count them as traffic and discovery, not as ranking credit.
How do I check dofollow and nofollow links on a page?
Search the page source for your domain and read the rel on each anchor pointing at it: no rel, or noopener and noreferrer, means dofollow; nofollow, ugc or sponsored means it is not. Then inspect the link in DevTools in case a script builds it, make sure the href is your own domain rather than a redirect the site's robots.txt blocks and look for a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header saying nofollow, which withdraws every link on the page.
How do I make a dofollow link in HTML?
Write a plain anchor and keep nofollow, ugc and sponsored out of its rel: <a href="https://example.com/">Example</a> is a dofollow link. Adding rel="noopener noreferrer" to a link that opens in a new tab keeps it dofollow. Then make sure the page carries no robots nofollow rule, in a meta tag or a header, since that applies to every anchor on it.
Why is my directory link nofollow when the directory says dofollow?
On a badge directory, look at the condition first. CurlShip, Neeed and SubmitMySaas link a free listing nofollow until their badge is found on your site and turn it nofollow again when the badge goes; CurlShip checks every hour, and changing your listed URL resets its check. Other causes are a paid tier whose link is marked sponsored and a Visit button routed through a redirect the directory's robots.txt disallows. Submitator places every badge your directories ask for with one component and keeps them live, so the badge condition stays met.
Keep reading
$30 to skip one badge, or 30 directories for $29
CurlShip's Bronze Lifetime is $30 once for a dofollow link without its badge. Submitator is $29 for 30 directories you pick and $79 for 100, with every badge placed and kept live, one-time.