nofollow pages
Pages with nofollow directives prevent search engines from following their links
What it is
crawler.sh flags a page as nofollow when it contains a nofollow directive in either the <meta name="robots"> tag or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. This is check #12 in the SEO analysis.
Why it matters for SEO
A page-level nofollow directive tells search engines not to follow any links on that page:
- Link equity loss - Links from nofollowed pages don’t pass PageRank or authority to the linked pages, weakening your internal linking structure.
- Discovery impact - Search engines may not discover pages that are only linked from nofollowed pages, leading to indexation gaps.
- Intentional vs accidental - Like noindex, nofollow is sometimes applied accidentally via CMS settings or templates.
Why it matters for AEO
AI answer engines use link structure to understand content relationships and site authority. If key pages have nofollow directives, AI systems may not traverse your internal links to discover related content, reducing the overall visibility of your site in AI-generated answers.
How to fix it
Review each nofollowed page and determine whether the directive is intentional:
Pages where nofollow may be appropriate:
- User-generated content pages (comments, forums) where you can’t vouch for linked sites
- Login or registration pages
- Pages with paid or sponsored links
Pages where nofollow is usually wrong:
- Main navigation pages
- Blog posts and content pages
- Category and listing pages
- Any page with important internal links
To remove a page-level nofollow directive:
<!-- Remove or update this --><meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
<!-- If combined with other directives, remove only nofollow --><meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"><!-- becomes --><meta name="robots" content="noindex">What crawler.sh reports
In the CLI, nofollow pages appear under the “Nofollow pages” section of crawler seo output. Each affected URL is listed. In the desktop app, they appear in the SEO Issues card.
