Attaching the ‘nofollow’ attribute to a hyperlink signals to search engines that the link is either of a commercial nature or one that the site owner does not endorse. Such links are commonly referred to as nofollow links. To clarify, here’s an example of a hyperlink utilizing the ‘nofollow’ attribute: The ‘nofollow’ concept originated in 2005 as a strategy to mitigate comment spam on blogs. Familiar with SEO? Search engines consider the number of inbound links from other reputable sites when ranking a website. A high number of reputable links pointing to your site suggests a strong likelihood of its credibility.Spammers, seeking to boost their clients’ search engine rankings, often flood other websites with excessive links. Target-rich environments for spammers are the “comments” sections of esteemed blogs. To combat this, the ‘nofollow’ attribute was introduced.Spammers were hoping to gain recognition for their links, but with ‘nofollow’, their efforts went unrewarded. This concept has since evolved. Today, ‘nofollow’ is also applied to links that are commercial or for-profit.Examples include:
paid links
banner ads
sponsored content
text link ads
affiliate links
The ‘nofollow’ attribute originated as a microformat but is now part of the latest W3C HTML specification under section 4.8.4.7, “Link type ‘nofollow'”. Here’s how to correctly use the ‘rel=”nofollow”‘ attribute according to the specifications:The ‘nofollow’ keyword signifies that the link is not supported by the original author or publisher of the page, or that the link to the referenced document was included due to a commercial relationship between parties associated with the two pages.4.8 Links — HTML5According to the specifications, there are two instances when you should use ‘nofollow’:
When the link is something you cannot or do not endorse
When the link is commercial in nature
Let’s delve into these two scenarios.A common example of a non-endorsed link is one that was placed on your site by another party. For instance, if you have a blog, reader-generated comments often contain links. It’s impractical to review every single link posted by commenters. By using the ‘nofollow’ attribute in your blog’s “comments” section, you inform search engines that you haven’t reviewed, and thus cannot vouch for, any of the links.Wikipedia applies the ‘nofollow’ attribute to all external links. Given the site’s vast content and open editing policy, verifying every external link is impractical. Like WordPress, Wikipedia categorically assigns the ‘nofollow’ attribute to all external links.On Reddit, new link submissions are ‘nofollow’. When a link is voted onto the front page, its ‘nofollow’ attribute is removed, reflecting Reddit’s democratic approach to link assessment.When a link on your site is primarily for profit, it should be tagged with ‘nofollow’. Essentially, if you host paid advertisements such as banner ads, text links, sponsored content, or affiliate links, the links to your advertisers’ sites should be ‘nofollow’ links.This practice discourages sites from attempting to improve their search rankings by purchasing links. The ‘nofollow’ attribute primarily benefits third-party services. For example, search engines can use the information we provide about links on our site to identify potentially low-quality or commercial links.By adding the ‘nofollow’ attribute to links that are paid for or unreviewed, we can reduce the likelihood of our site being penalized by search engines for publishing low-quality external links, thereby improving our website’s SEO and credibility as a source of quality content.
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