Dofollow vs nofollow links, explained
Every directory list on the internet advertises dofollow links and most founders have never checked one. It takes ten seconds.
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- SpacerrApps
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- Reading time
- 3 min read
Half the advice about getting listed anywhere hinges on one word in one HTML attribute, and almost nobody checks it before spending an afternoon on submissions.
Here is what it means and how to look.
There is no such thing as "dofollow"
That is the first thing worth knowing. There is no dofollow value. A link is followed by default, and the rel attribute is what takes that away.
<a href="https://yoursite.com">Your product</a>
That link passes ranking credit. It is what everybody means by dofollow.
<a href="https://yoursite.com" rel="nofollow">Your product</a>
That one does not.
The three values that remove credit
Google introduced nofollow in 2005 and split it into three in 2019. All three are now treated as hints rather than absolute rules, which in practice means do not count on any of them passing anything.
| Value | What it means | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| nofollow | The site does not vouch for this link | Comment sections, wikis, many directories |
| sponsored | This link was paid for | Ads, paid placements, affiliate links |
| ugc | A user posted this, not the site | Forums, profiles, reviews |
A link can carry more than one. And rel="noopener", which you will see constantly, has nothing to do with any of this: it is a security attribute for links that open in a new tab, and it passes credit normally.
How to check any link in ten seconds
On the page that links to you, right click the link and choose inspect. Look at the anchor tag in the panel that opens. If there is no rel, or the rel is only noopener or noreferrer, the link is followed.
To check a whole page at once, open the browser console and run a query for anchors carrying a nofollow, sponsored or ugc rel. Anything the query does not return is followed.
Do this before submitting anywhere. It is the difference between a directory being worth an afternoon and being worth nothing but the traffic.
Which one should you actually want
A followed link, obviously. But the framing that gets founders into trouble is treating nofollow as worthless.
A nofollow link from a page real people read sends real people. That is a fine thing to want and you should simply price it as advertising rather than as SEO. What you should not do is spend a weekend submitting to two hundred sites on the promise of dofollow links and never check one.
The ten directories worth the hour are ranked partly on this, and the rest of the sources of a genuinely followed link are in free backlinks for startups.
The rule from the other side
If you ever run a site that links out, the same attribute is a statement of fact about money, and it has to be right in both directions.
Marking a paid link as ordinary is a link scheme, and the penalty lands on the whole domain rather than the page. Marking a free link as sponsored is a false claim in the other direction, and it quietly retracts whatever you promised the person you listed.
That is why this site draws the line by component rather than by a flag: the sponsor placements on the home page carry rel="sponsored" and nothing else on the site does. Every listing and every write-up is free on every tier, so every one of those links is editorial and followed.
What a followed link is actually worth
Not much, on its own. A single link from a mid-sized directory will not move you.
Eleven of them, from pages that would exist without you, over a quarter, is roughly what it takes before your own pages start ranking for the long-tail phrases you wrote them for. That is the realistic shape, and anybody quoting a bigger number is selling link-farm entries. The longer version of that argument is in do directory submissions still work.
Start with two
Submit your app and you get two followed links: a directory page and a written article about it. Free on every tier, and a person reviews every submission before either goes live, which is what makes them editorial links rather than an automatic directory entry.