Link attributes: nofollow, sponsored and ugc

A link attribute is a label inside the HTML of a link that tells search engines how the linking site wants the link treated. Three matter for off-page SEO: nofollow, sponsored and ugc. A link with none of them is a normal, followed link.

The short version: the labels are requests, not switches. Google has treated all three as hints since September 2019, which means it decides for itself whether a labelled link counts.

The three attributes

Attribute	What it says	Where you see it
rel="nofollow"	The site does not want to be associated with the target or vouch for it	News sites with a blanket policy on external links, social profiles, links a site is unsure about
rel="sponsored"	The link exists because of payment, advertising or an affiliate deal	Advertorials, paid placements, affiliate links
rel="ugc"	A user added the link, not the site’s own editors	Comments, forum posts, community profiles

Attributes can be combined, for example rel="ugc nofollow". Google’s guidance is to use sponsored for paid links, with nofollow still acceptable, and ugc for forums and comments.

There is no dofollow attribute

“Dofollow” is trade slang for a link with no label. It is useful shorthand when you agree terms with a publisher, but nothing in HTML is called dofollow. If a vendor promises “dofollow links”, it means only that the link will carry none of the three labels.

What “hint” means

Before 2019, nofollow was treated as an instruction: the link was not used for ranking. Google’s September 2019 announcement added sponsored and ugc and changed all three into hints.

A hint means Google may count the link, use it to understand the web, or ignore it. Google has not published how often it does each. Anyone who tells you nofollow links pass a fixed share of value is guessing.

The best public data does not settle it. In Ahrefs’ study of one million keywords, published in January 2025, followed referring domains correlated with rankings at 0.250 and all referring domains, including nofollow ones, at 0.255. The numbers are almost identical, so they cannot separate the effect of followed links from the rest. Practitioners lean one way: 78.8% believe nofollow links have an effect on rankings, according to a March 2026 survey of 518 SEOs by Editorial.link. That is a belief, not proof.

A fair reading is that nofollow links pass some value in some cases, with medium confidence at best.

What Google’s policy requires

Google’s spam policies, last updated in August 2026, treat buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam. The same page says buying and selling links for advertising is fine when the link is qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".

Two other rules in the policy touch attributes:

• Text ads or text links that do not block ranking credit are listed as link spam.
• Requiring a link as part of a contract or terms of service, without letting the other party qualify the link, is listed as link spam.

Affiliate links should carry sponsored or nofollow for the same reason.

How the labels are used in practice

The sponsored attribute is rare. A figure reported from an Ahrefs study of top sites puts it at about 0.01% of referring domains. We have not verified that number on the original page, so treat it as indicative. Surveys also suggest paid links are common: 92% of SEOs believe their competitors buy links, according to a survey reported by Search Engine Land. Put together, the two findings imply that most paid links carry no label.

Labelling differs by type of publisher. An ESBO analysis of 16,625 publishers, published in Entrepreneur in September 2026, found that 57% of premium publishers label sponsored content against 15% of budget publishers. It also found that 39% of publishers with a Domain Rating of 80 or more sell nofollow placements only, at a median price of $1,840, against $510 for publishers that sell followed links. The strongest publishers, in other words, tend not to sell ranking credit at all.

Do nofollow links have any value?

Yes, for three reasons that do not depend on how Google handles the hint.

Readers. A link in a publication your customers read sends visitors whatever its label.

A natural profile. Real link profiles contain both followed and labelled links. A profile with no nofollow links at all would be unusual.

AI assistants. A nofollow or unlinked mention in a publication that AI assistants cite still places your brand in a document they can retrieve. Link attributes matter less there than in classic ranking. See brand mentions and citations.

Using attributes on your own site

• Add sponsored to any link you were paid for, including affiliate links and links given in exchange for a product.
• Add ugc to links in comments, forum posts and other content your users write.
• Add nofollow when you need to link to a page but do not want to vouch for it.
• Leave ordinary editorial links alone. Labelling every external link by default hides useful information from search engines and from the sites you cite.

If you sell placements without a label, the risk sits with you as well as the buyer. Google has a manual action for “unnatural links from your site”, which applies to sites that sell or place manipulative outbound links.

When you are buying or earning links

Check the attribute before you pay and after the page goes live. View the page source or use a browser extension that highlights labelled links. Agree the attribute in writing, and re-check after a few months, because publishers sometimes add labels later.

Do not reject coverage because it is nofollow. A link in a national news article with a blanket nofollow policy is still earned coverage. A followed link from a site that sells to anyone is still a paid link in Google’s eyes.

Where to go next

Read what is a backlink if you skipped it, then do backlinks still matter for the evidence on links as a whole. For what happens when paid links are caught, see Google link penalties and recovery.