How to keep an eye on your nofollow backlinks

Nofollow backlinks are links from other sites to yours that carry rel="nofollow", sponsored or ugc. You can't stop other sites from labeling their links, but you can watch the pattern: how much of your link profile is followed, which strong sites link with nofollow, and whether that share moves over time. This guide sets up a simple monthly routine, and is upfront about what it cannot catch.

Why the followed share is worth watching

Google has treated nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints since its September 2019 change, so a nofollow backlink is not worthless. It can still send visitors and help Google discover your pages. But Google also said that in most cases it would keep treating ugc and nofollow links as before, not considering them for ranking. So when you compare your site with a competitor, the split between plain and labeled links tells you something about where each of you stands.

Changes in that split are worth a look:

• A strong site switches you to nofollow. Perhaps a partner page was reclassified, or a publisher now labels all outbound links.
• Your share drops after a campaign. If most new links came from comments, forums or sponsored posts, they should be labeled, and that is expected.
• A competitor's share rises sharply. Worth a look at where those links came from.

The monthly routine

You need a link index for this, since you can't crawl the web yourself. The Backlink Finder on seogeoaeo.ai is a good fit for a recurring check because it is priced per run rather than per seat.

1. Run it on your domain. It returns the 100 strongest sites linking to you, each with a link rank from 0 to 1,000, the number of links, the date its first link was seen, a spam score, and the share of its linking pages that are followed rather than nofollow. The cost is 70 credits.
2. Run it on one competitor. Same tool, same month, so the two lists come from the same data.
3. Export both and keep them. Plans include saved run history and exports.
4. Next month, repeat and compare. Look at three things: sites new to the list (sort by first-seen date), sites whose followed share changed, and sites that dropped off.
5. Check spam scores before reacting. Sites scoring 40 or more out of 100 are marked likely spam. A drop in followed links from those is not a loss.

Two runs a month is 140 credits. The Indie plan, at $29 a month, includes 2,000 credits, so the routine leaves room for other checks. For a single headline number instead of per-site detail, the Domain Overview (50 credits) reports the share of a domain's links that use nofollow, along with rankings.

What this routine cannot do

Be clear about the limits before you rely on it.

• No alerts. The Backlink Finder is a lookup you run, not a monitor. It won't tell you the day a link changes. You learn about it at your next run.
• No full list. It shows the 100 strongest linking sites and 50 link texts, not every backlink. On a large site that is a small share.
• Whole domain only. You can't narrow it to one page or folder.
• Estimates. Link rank, spam scores and counts come from a data provider. Neither this tool nor any other outside tool can tell you which links Google counts.

If you need to know immediately when a specific page that links to you changes, for instance a partner page you care about, a page-monitoring service that watches that URL is the better tool for that one job. Use the monthly lookup for the overall picture.

What to do with what you find

Most of the time, nothing. A nofollow link from a relevant, busy page is a fine link to have. A few cases call for action:

• A paid link that is followed. If you paid for a placement and it carries no label, ask the site to add rel="sponsored". Google's spam policies treat unmarked paid links as link spam, for the buyer's site as well as the seller's.
• An editorial link that turned nofollow. If a site you have a real relationship with labels your link, you can ask why. Google's outbound links guide says regular links need no rel value, but the decision is theirs.
• A competitor's followed links you lack. That list is a prospect list for outreach, which is a separate project.

Keep each month's exports in one folder, named by date. After three or four runs, the trend will tell you more than any single snapshot.