Member Avatar for globeseal

It has long been known that Yahoo doesn’t discount nofollow links completely. It also seems that Google makes exceptions as well.

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Short answer: nofollow links are not pointless, but they are not the same as editorial follow links. They can drive direct referral traffic, help search engines discover pages, and create indirect SEO value (brand mentions that later attract editorial links). The thread touches on uncertainty and ratios — that uncertainty is real because search engines have changed how they treat link signals over time. Credit to for flagging cross-engine behavior and to , and for stressing natural, diverse linking.

Practical markup and when to use it: mark paid placements and ads with rel="sponsored", user-generated content with rel="ugc", and use rel="nofollow" for links you do not want to endorse. Example HTML:

<a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">link</a>
<a href="https://example.com" rel="sponsored">sponsored link</a>
<a href="https://example.com" rel="ugc">forum post link</a>

What to measure and monitor: focus on outcomes rather than chasing a percentage. Track referral traffic from nofollow sources, organic rank changes over time, linking root domains, anchor-text diversity, and sudden link-velocity spikes. Use Google Search Console to review top linking sites and any manual-action messages. Third-party tools (Ahrefs/Moz/Majestic) can help spot patterns, but a manual review is essential before taking action.

If concerned about spammy or paid links, start with outreach to remove links, only use the disavow tool after careful auditing, and ensure future paid placements are marked as sponsored. The practical takeaway tied to this thread: avoid fixating on an exact follow/nofollow ratio; aim for a natural, diverse backlink profile and clear, documented handling of paid and user-generated links.

Recommended Answers

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Member Avatar for SEOnlace

It's always good to have a certain amount of nofollow links in your backlink portfolio. Only nofollow links look very unnatural. The follow nofollow link should be around 80% to 20% respectively.

Member Avatar for SJaved7

These are just remoures no one can tell what the actual ratio is and how it should be.

Member Avatar for moore.methews

Yeah you can say 25 to 50% out of 100...

Member Avatar for Jamivsocio

Yes its is but its very raer.

Member Avatar for tarwara

If you have seen 10-20 videos of matt cutt, you can analyze that he does not speak clearly and because Google does not want make everything clear to webmasters due to spamming. But best way is to do natural SEO instead of focusing on one thing. You never know when Google will update somthing that eliminate sites having a big ratio of dofollow links. Javed is right there is no actuall ratio. Submit links to social site they are mostly nofollow but good for gaining traffic.

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