nofollow
Nofollow is a directive that tells search engines not to pass link equity through links on a page.
Nofollow is a directive that tells search engines not to follow links on a page or not to pass link equity (ranking value) through specific links. It can be applied at the page level with <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> or at the link level with <a href="..." rel="nofollow">.
Page-level vs link-level nofollow
Page-level nofollow applies to every link on the page. This is a broad directive that prevents link equity from flowing to any linked page. Link-level nofollow applies only to specific links, which is more targeted and generally preferred.
Page-level nofollow is rarely the right choice for internal pages. It blocks the natural flow of link equity through your site, weakening your internal linking structure.
When to use nofollow
- User-generated content: Comments, forum posts, and profile links where you cannot vouch for link quality
- Paid links: Sponsored content and advertisements must use nofollow (or sponsored) per search engine guidelines
- Untrusted external links: Links to sites you do not want to endorse
Risks of page-level nofollow
Applying nofollow at the page level blocks link equity to all pages linked from that page, including your own internal pages. This can weaken your site’s internal linking structure and reduce the ranking power of important pages.
How crawler.sh helps
The crawler seo command flags pages with page-level nofollow directives so you can review whether the directive is intentional. If internal pages are unnecessarily nofollowed, replacing the page-level directive with link-level nofollow on specific links preserves your internal link equity.
