Aristotle sorted friendship into three kinds, by the motive behind it: the good, the pleasant and the useful. Of the third kind he wrote that "they whose motive is utility have no Friendship for one another really, but only in so far as some good arises to them from one another." (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII, chapter IV, in the Project Gutenberg edition.) Such a bond is not worthless. It is unstable, because "it is the nature of utility not to be permanent", and when the benefit goes, the friendship goes with it.
A link can work the same way. A link placed because someone paid for it, or because anyone can drop one into a comment box, is a bond of utility. A link placed because the writer thinks the page is worth a reader's time is closer to the kind Aristotle called good. This is an analogy, and Aristotle said nothing about the web. Google built its rel attributes to mark roughly this difference. What Google says about them has changed since 2005, and this post lays out the dated record.
Where nofollow came from
On 18 January 2005 the Official Google Blog announced the attribute in a post signed by Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen of Blogger. Its purpose was comment spam. Google wrote that links with rel="nofollow" "won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted". The post asked sites to use it "anywhere that users can add links by themselves".
PageRank sculpting, and why it stopped
Some site owners tried to steer PageRank inside their own sites by adding nofollow to links they did not want to feed. On 15 June 2009 Cutts wrote about it on his own blog. He described a change made "more than a year ago": Google had changed how PageRank flows, so that nofollowed links no longer dropped out of the division and the plain links on a page did not receive a bigger share. His advice was "In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site."
That is 2009 behavior, from before the hint model below. Treat it as history.
What Google has said, in order
We opened each source below in October 2026. Where the original is gone, we say which archive copy we read.
| Date | Who | What was said |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Jan 2005 | Matt Cutts and Jason Shellen, Google blog | Nofollow links "won't get any credit" in rankings. Made for comment spam. |
| 15 Jun 2009 | Matt Cutts, own blog | Nofollow links "don't help sites rank higher in Google's search results." Nofollowed links still used up a share of PageRank on the page. |
| 10 Sep 2019 | Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes, Google Search Central blog | Announced sponsored and ugc. All three values "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search." |
| 10 Sep 2019 | Same post | "We'll generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes." |
| 10 Sep 2019 | Same post | "For crawling and indexing purposes, nofollow will become a hint as of March 1, 2020." |
| By 11 Sep 2019 | Google help page, Wayback copy | "Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed." The sentence is still on the current page, last updated 10 Dec 2025. |
| 28 Aug 2026 | Google spam policies, page update date | Links bought or sold for advertising or sponsorship are not a violation "as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value". Buying or selling links for ranking purposes is listed as link spam. |
Hint or "not followed"? Both are on Google's pages
Two Google pages seem to disagree. The 2019 blog post says the three values are hints. The help page says links marked with them "will generally not be followed". Here is what the text allows.
- Same week. The help-page sentence was already there on 11 September 2019, the day after the blog post, so it is not a later reversal. The sentence was also unchanged in copies from 11 March and 9 December 2020.
- Different subjects. The help-page sentence is about crawling, meaning following a link to fetch a page. It adds that the page "may still be crawled" if it is found through sitemaps or other sites. It never uses the word "hint" and never mentions ranking.
- One default. The same blog post says the move to hints "won't change the nature of how we treat such links" in most cases. The old treatment mostly stays.
We did not find any Google figure for how often a nofollow, sponsored or ugc link affects ranking, or any example of a case where it does. Anyone who gives you a percentage is not quoting anything we found from Google.
What Google staff have said around the change
Staff remarks, even in official videos, are weaker evidence than documents.
- In April 2020 office hours, John Mueller said Google was using nofollow "more as a signal", and that it is "not the case that we completely always ignore those links". We read this at about 20:20 in the video's English captions. The caption track writes nofollow as "no follow" and, in one sentence, as "follow", so check the audio if you reuse it. It was a reply to a viewer's question, not a policy.
- In September 2019 Gary Illyes, replying on Twitter to a question about publications that nofollow every link, wrote that the move to a hint-based system "may cover every link list to nofollow", and that Google had nothing "to announce at the moment". That is a "may".
- In an August 2019 Ask Google Webmasters video, John Mueller said that when Google's systems run across such links, "we take note of them, but we don't forward any of these so-called signals to the linked pages". This was a month before the hint announcement. It points the other way.
What a nofollow link can still do
- Bring readers. In the August 2019 video quoted above, John Mueller says "it's still a link on the web, and users may be using those to reach your website". He also says such links "will still be shown in the Search Console links report".
- Keep you compliant. The spam policy lists "Exchanging money for links" as link spam when done for ranking, and says qualified paid links are "not a violation of our policies".
What Google's current documents do not say is that a nofollow link helps rankings. They also do not say it never can. The 2019 post gives the closest answer: Google says it will generally not count these links for ranking, and it calls them hints rather than a hard rule.
Which attribute fits which link
| Link type | Google's wording | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Ads and paid placements | "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value." nofollow "is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred." | sponsored |
| Comments and forums | "We recommend marking user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value." | ugc |
| Anything else you do not vouch for | "Use the nofollow value when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site." | nofollow |
| Your own pages | "For links within your own site, use the robots.txt disallow rule." | No rel needed for a plain link. To stop a fetch, use robots.txt |
Guest posts are not named in the help page. The spam policy lists "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as link spam. If money or goods changed hands for the link, it is a paid link and sponsored applies.
Google says regular links need no rel attribute. Its link guidance says: "Use nofollow only when you don't trust the source, and not for every external link on your site."
What to do
- Mark paid links
sponsored. Any link you were paid for, or received goods for, gets it.nofollowis also accepted, but Google says it preferssponsored. - Mark user links
ugc. Comments and forum posts should carry it. Google says you might remove it for trusted members who have contributed well over time. - Leave your honest editorial links plain. A link you chose because the page deserves it needs no attribute.
- Do not rewrite old nofollow links. Google's 2019 post says "There's absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have."
- Judge an incoming link by its page, not by its attribute. A nofollow link on a busy page can still send readers. A plain link on an abandoned page tells nobody anything. For a method, see our posts on checking an aged domain before buying and on why DR and DA scores disagree.
- Never promise a ranking from a rel attribute. Neither Google's documents nor this post can.
The limits of this record
- Google's pages can change. Re-read them before you act on a point that matters to you.
- Several quotes come from staff remarks, and we have said which each is.
- Cutts's 2005 and 2009 statements describe older behavior.
Aristotle observed that fault-finding arises most easily in bonds of utility, and advised settling at the outset "on what understanding" a favour is taken (Book VIII, chapter XIII). The sponsored and ugc values do something comparable: they tell Google what kind of link this is. Again, an analogy only.
Frequently asked questions
Do nofollow links help SEO?
Google has not said they do, and has not said they never can. Its 2019 post treats nofollow as a hint and says it will "generally" keep the old treatment, which was to not count the link for ranking. A nofollow link can still bring readers.
Is nofollow a ranking factor?
Google has not called it a ranking factor in those words. The help page on rel attributes never uses the word "rank". The 2019 blog post says the three values work as hints "for ranking purposes", and that in most cases the old treatment continues.
What is the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?
sponsored is for ads and paid placements, ugc is for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts, and nofollow is for links where neither fits and you would rather Google not associate your site with the page. Google says it prefers sponsored for paid links but accepts nofollow.
Should I nofollow all my outbound links?
No. Google's link guidance says to use nofollow only when you do not trust the source, "and not for every external link on your site".
Do I need to change old nofollow links to sponsored?
No. Google's 2019 post says there is "absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have." The exception it names is paid links: it says "There's no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links", and either sponsored or nofollow flags them.