Dofollow Backlinks in 2026: What They Are, How to Check Them and How to Get Them

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Google says it uses links as a signal when it judges how relevant a page is and to find new pages to crawl. That is why dofollow backlinks remain the part of a backlink profile that site owners care about most. This guide explains what the term covers, how each rel value changes a link, how to check a link in under a minute, what a healthy mix looks like and the safe ways to earn followed links, with the methods compared in a table.

What is a dofollow backlink?

A dofollow backlink is a standard HTML link, written as <a href="https://example.com">, placed on another website and pointing to yours, with no rel value that asks search engines to hold back. Because nothing restricts it, Google can follow it, crawl the target page and pass part of the linking page's authority, the value that PageRank was built to measure.

The word itself is SEO jargon. Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links lists three rel values (sponsored, ugc and nofollow) and nothing else: a regular link needs no attribute at all. The HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2024 still found rel="dofollow" on about 0.4% of pages, and notes that "dofollow" and "follow" are not real attributes and are ignored by search engines. Adding them changes nothing.

Dofollow vs nofollow, sponsored and UGC: what is the difference?

Since 2019 Google offers three values to qualify a link, and they can be combined (for example rel="ugc nofollow"). The nofollow value dates back to 2005, when it was introduced to fight comment spam on blogs; sponsored and ugc were added to describe paid and user-generated links more precisely.

The word hint matters. In its September 2019 announcement, Google moved from treating nofollow as a strict rule to treating all three values as hints, and extended this to crawling and indexing on March 1, 2020. Google may therefore still use a nofollow link in some cases, but you cannot count on it. A followed link is the only type designed to pass ranking credit.

Do dofollow backlinks still help rankings?

Yes. Links remain one of the signals Google uses to rank pages, and followed links from relevant, trusted sites are the ones that carry that signal. Their weight depends on the linking page far more than on the attribute alone. Three factors make the difference:

• Relevance: a link from a site in your field, on a page about your topic, counts more than a link from an unrelated directory.
• Authority of the linking page: a page that itself earns links and traffic passes more value. Metrics such as domain authority give a rough estimate of this.
• Editorial placement: a link inside the body of an article, chosen by its author, weighs more than one in a footer, a sidebar or a list of 300 links.

Our guide to quality backlinks turns these criteria into a scoring grid. The practical conclusion: ten followed links from relevant sites usually do more than hundreds of followed links from weak pages.

What is a healthy ratio of dofollow to nofollow backlinks?

Google has never published a target ratio, and any precise percentage you read is an estimate from a tool vendor. What matters is that the profile looks like the result of real activity. A site that people talk about naturally collects both kinds: followed links from articles and partners, nofollow or ugc links from forums, social networks, comments and some news sites that qualify all outbound links.

A profile made almost entirely of followed links from unknown blogs, with exact-match anchors, is a classic sign of bought links. Our list of types of backlinks shows which sources usually bring followed links and which do not. Use the ratio as a warning light rather than a goal: if your followed links come from pages nobody reads, review them with a toxic backlinks check.

How to check if a backlink is dofollow

A link can look followed in the browser and still pass nothing. Check these points in order:

1. The rel attribute: right-click the link, choose Inspect, and look for nofollow, sponsored or ugc in the <a> tag.
2. The page-level directive: a meta robots tag with "nofollow" in the page's head, or an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, applies nofollow to every link on the page.
3. Indexing: a page blocked by robots.txt or marked noindex passes little or no value, even if its links are followed.
4. The link itself: links built only with JavaScript events or routed through redirect scripts may not be crawled as a normal <a href>.

To check many links at once, browser extensions highlight followed and nofollow links on any page; our free SEO Chrome extension shows the SEO fixes of the page you are on. For your whole profile, Google Search Console lists the sites that link to you but does not separate followed from nofollow links, so a backlink analysis tool is the faster way to filter them.

How to get dofollow backlinks safely

Google's spam policies list "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" and excessive "link to me and I'll link to you" schemes as link spam, and accept paid links only when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". A paid link that is properly marked will therefore not be dofollow. The methods below earn followed links that respect those rules.

For the detailed steps, see our guides to digital PR, guest posting and backlink strategies, which compares eleven methods by effort and risk. Two habits raise the share of followed links in all of them: link to a page that deserves it (a guide, a study, a tool rather than a product page), and give the editor a precise sentence and source they can use as is.

Dofollow backlinks, SEO and GEO

On Google, followed links from relevant sites help a page rank. In AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, what counts is being mentioned on the pages those assistants read and cite, whether the link is followed or not. A nofollow link in a widely read article or a forum thread can still put your brand in front of the AIs, and our study of the platforms the AIs cite most shows which sources matter. The best link sources serve both goals: a cited, relevant mention with a followed link.

Sorank, our product, works on both sides. It writes and publishes optimized articles, obtains natural backlinks automatically from the sites of its 5,000+ users through its backlinks feature, and shows which competitors the AIs cite instead of you with SEO Competitor Spy.

What to remember

A dofollow backlink is simply a link without nofollow, sponsored or ugc, and its value depends on the site that gives it. Check the attribute and the page directives, look at referring domains rather than raw counts, and earn links with assets other sites want to cite. To grow both your Google rankings and your presence in AI answers, see the Sorank plans, with a 3-day free trial.