# Do nofollow links help SEO? What a founder should actually count > They may pass a little credit as a Google hint, but their reliable value is visitors, discovery and a readable mention. URL: https://claudegpt.si/news/do-nofollow-links-help-seo-founder Published: 2026-10-26T05:21:26.746Z Author: ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom Section: Guides Topics: Nofollow, Link building, Startups Publisher: ClaudeGPT Si ## Key takeaways - Google treats nofollow as a hint, and its 2019 post said ugc and nofollow links would generally still not be considered for ranking. - Nofollow links can still send visitors, help Google discover a page and carry a mention people can read. - Paid links need rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow"; unmarked paid links count as link spam under Google's policies. Do nofollow links help SEO? Not in the way most founders hope. Google treats `rel="nofollow"` as a hint, so such a link may or may not count toward rankings, and you will never find out which. What they reliably give you is traffic, discovery and a mention people can read. That is worth something, but it should change how you spend your hours, not whether you bother. This piece is for founders and operators who do their own marketing and need to decide where links fit in the week. ## What actually changed Until 2019, the rule was simple: Google ignored nofollow links for ranking. On September 10, 2019, Google's search team [announced](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify) that nofollow, plus two new values, `sponsored` and `ugc`, would be treated as hints weighed with other signals. Nofollow became a hint for crawling and indexing on March 1, 2020. The same post said that in most cases Google would treat ugc and nofollow links much as before, not considering them for ranking. So the honest summary is: a small, unmeasurable chance of credit, and no promise. ## What a nofollow link is worth to a small company Think about each link the way you would think about a sales channel. **Traffic.** A nofollow link on a busy page in your niche can send buyers. Those visits land in your analytics as referrals, and you can judge them by signups, not by SEO theory. **Discovery.** Google's [outbound links guide](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links) says nofollow links generally won't be followed, yet the target can still be found through sitemaps or other sites. For a new site with few links, every path in helps a little. **The mention itself.** If a forum reply or a newsletter archive says what your product does, those words stay on the page whatever the link attribute is. People read them, and AI assistants that read the page can repeat them. **Rankings.** Possible, unknown, not something to budget for. ## Where founder time goes further If you have three hours a week for links, spend them in this order: 1. **Links you earn editorially.** Roundups, resource pages and articles that cite your data. A site that links to you on its own judgment has no reason to qualify the link, and Google says regular links need no `rel` value. 2. **Places your buyers already read**, nofollow or not. A useful answer on a community site where your customers ask questions can pay for itself in visits. 3. **Directories that edit their listings.** Some are worth it for visibility. Google's spam policies name low-quality directory links as link spam, so skip the ones that accept anything. Skip anything sold "for SEO". ## The one rule that protects you Google's [spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) treat buying or selling links for ranking as link spam. That includes paying with goods or services, and sending a product to someone in exchange for a post with a link. Paid links for advertising are fine when they carry `rel="sponsored"` or `rel="nofollow"`. For a founder this cuts both ways: - When you pay for placement, an affiliate deal or a sponsored newsletter slot, expect the link to be marked sponsored. If a seller promises it won't be, walk away. - When you are the one being paid, for example a partner page or a sponsored post on your blog, mark the link. Google says sponsored is preferred and nofollow still works. Google's 2019 post says mislabeling a link as sponsored when it isn't costs little; at most Google might not count it as credit. Leaving a paid link unmarked is where the risk is. ## How to see what you already have Before chasing more links, look at the profile you have. The [Backlink Finder on seogeoaeo.ai](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/backlink-finder) lists the 100 strongest sites linking to a domain, with each site's link rank, link count, first-seen date, spam score, and the share of its linking pages that are followed rather than nofollow. A run is 70 credits, and the cheapest plan, Indie, is $29 a month for 2,000 credits. Run it on yourself and on one competitor and compare the followed shares. Know its limits. It covers the whole domain, not single pages, it does not list every link, and the figures are the provider's estimates. It cannot tell you which links Google counts, because nobody outside Google can. ## The short version for your notes - Nofollow links: count them as traffic and visibility, not as rankings. - Plain editorial links: still the ones to earn. - Paid links: always sponsored or nofollow, whichever side of the deal you are on. - Measure referrals and signups from each link, not an SEO score. ## Frequently asked questions ### Are nofollow links good for SEO? They are good for traffic and visibility. Any ranking credit is at Google's discretion, since nofollow is a hint, so don't budget for it. ### Should a startup build nofollow links? Only where your buyers already read. Judge each one by the visits and signups it sends, not by its attribute. ### Can nofollow links hurt my site? Ordinary nofollow links are normal. The risk is paid links that are not marked sponsored or nofollow. ## Sources - [Evolving "nofollow": new ways to identify the nature of links](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify), Google Search Central - [Qualify your outbound links to Google](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links), Google Search Central - [Spam policies for Google web search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies), Google Search Central - [Backlink Finder](https://seogeoaeo.ai/tools/backlink-finder), seogeoaeo.ai - [seogeoaeo.ai pricing](https://seogeoaeo.ai/pricing), seogeoaeo.ai