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The attribute rel="dofollow" does not exist, neither in the HTML standard nor at Google. What counts instead, which three values have existed since 2019 and why paid placements need disclosure.
David Hahn · August 16, 2026 · 6 min read
The short version
Searching for the dofollow link usually means searching for an attribute you could set. There is none.
The HTML standard lists link types including nofollow, noopener, noreferrer and external. A value dofollow does not appear. Nor does the registry the standard points to for extensions.
Google phrases it from the other side. For regular links you expect Google to fetch and parse without qualification, no rel attribute is needed. (Source: Google Search Central, 2026)
Dofollow is therefore not a setting but the absence of one. The term emerged as a counterpart to nofollow, which Google introduced in January 2005 against comment spam.
How stubbornly the misconception survives is remarkable. A Web Almanac analysis found dofollow on 0.3 to 0.4 percent of pages surveyed, with no practical effect. (Source: Web Almanac, 2025) The value gets set and does nothing.
What a backlink is and how it works is covered in our piece on what backlinks are. This one is about the attributes beside it.
On 10 September 2019 Google introduced two new values and changed the meaning of the old one.
| Value | What it is meant for |
|---|---|
sponsored | advertising and paid placements |
ugc | user-generated content such as comments and forum posts |
nofollow | anything else you would rather not have associated with your site |
Google describes the choice pragmatically. There is no wrong attribute, with one exception: anything clearly an advert or sponsored belongs marked with sponsored or nofollow.
Multiple values can be combined, separated by spaces or commas. rel="ugc nofollow" is valid and both values apply together.
In practice the new values see almost no use. The Web Almanac found nofollow on roughly 31 percent of pages, while ugc and sponsored sit at about 0.5 percent each, a share that has not moved in years. (Source: Web Almanac, 2025)
The more important change of 2019 sits not in the new values but in the meaning.
When nofollow was introduced, Google counted a link marked that way as no signal at all. That has changed. All three attributes are now treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude. (Source: Google Search Central, 2019)
The dates deserve precision, because they get mixed up:
Google justified the switch by noting that valuable information was lost under the old handling. At the same time Google made clear nobody needs to change existing links.
In practice a nofollow link is no longer a guaranteed dead link. Google's wording is that such links are generally treated as before and not considered for ranking. That is a rule with room for judgement.
One caveat belongs here. Solid figures on the ranking effect of nofollow links do not exist. What circulates are vendor correlations without causal proof. The only reliable statement is Google's own.
This is where it turns practical for anyone buying placements.
Google's spam policies list buying and selling links for ranking purposes as a violation. That explicitly includes money for posts containing links, goods or services exchanged for links, and advertorials where payment is received for articles carrying links that pass ranking credit.
The sentence after that is decisive. Google understands that buying and selling links is a normal part of the web economy for advertising and sponsorship. It is not a policy violation to have such links as long as they are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". (Source: Google Search Central, 2026)
That draws the line clearly. Paid placements are permitted when disclosed. Undisclosed they are a policy violation.
To check how your own link profile looks in this respect, the procedure is in our piece on how to analyse backlinks. What methods exist in link building beyond that is covered in the overview of link building.
rel="dofollow". It does nothing. Leave the attribute off, that is the default.sponsored is the value designed for it, nofollow is accepted too.ugc for comments and forums. That is what the value is for.On the GetMentioned placement marketplace the link type is stated for every placement, so it is clear before booking what you get.
Three things. The attribute people search for does not exist; dofollow is the absence of a marker. Since 2019 three values are available, and since then they are hints rather than commands. And paid placements belong disclosed, which is Google's explicit condition.
An ordinary link without a restricting rel attribute. The term describes the default case and is not an attribute you can set.
No. Neither the HTML standard nor Google's documentation knows this value. It appears on a small fraction of pages on the web and has no effect there.
Dofollow is the default without an attribute. With nofollow the operator hints to Google not to treat the link as an endorsement. Since 2019 that is a hint rather than a fixed directive.
sponsored for advertising and paid placements, ugc for comments and forum posts, nofollow in every other case where you do not want the reference read as an endorsement.
Google treats them generally as before and does not consider them for ranking. Since the attributes have been hints since 2019, that is not an absolute rule. Solid figures on the effect do not exist.
Yes. Google lists undisclosed paid links as a policy violation but explicitly accepts them when marked with sponsored or nofollow.
Yes. Multiple values can be separated by spaces or commas, for example rel="ugc nofollow". They then apply together.
About the author
Managing Director, GetMentioned
David has been building link acquisition and digital PR processes since 2016, first as an agency under SEO Galaxy, today as a platform with GetMentioned. He has scaled his own projects from zero to seven-figure monthly traffic and delivered thousands of campaigns for clients. Here he writes about what works in practice, and about what only costs budget.
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