Two links can look exactly the same on your screen. You click either one, and another webpage opens. Yet behind the scenes, one of those links might contain a small piece of information that the other doesn’t.
That difference becomes easier to understand when you see how a link is written in HTML, the code used to build webpages. Let’s take a simple link that says “Read the guide.” Depending on how the website sets it up, the code might look like one of these four examples:
Regular link (often called Dofollow)
<a href="https://example.com/guide">Read the guide</a>
Nofollow link
<a href="https://example.com/guide" rel="nofollow">Read the guide</a>
Sponsored link
<a href="https://example.com/guide" rel="sponsored">Read the guide</a>
UGC link
<a href="https://example.com/guide" rel="ugc">Read the guide</a>
Notice that all four links contain the same destination and the same clickable words. The difference is the small rel label added to three of them. These labels help tell Google something about the link, such as whether it’s part of a paid placement or appears in content posted by users. A regular link doesn’t need a special dofollow label at all.
So even though these links look and work the same way for someone visiting the page, they can provide different information to Google. Understanding what each label means, when it’s used, and what it does not guarantee is the key to making sense of these four link types.
What Does Dofollow Actually Mean?
Look again at the first HTML example. The href part contains the web address the link opens, while “Read the guide” is the clickable text visitors see.
There’s no rel attribute qualifying the link.
In SEO, people commonly call a regular, unqualified link like this a dofollow link. The name can be confusing because it sounds like something you need to add to the code.
You don’t. There is no special HTML attribute called rel="dofollow" that Google requires.
When another website creates a standard link to your page, Google can consider that connection as part of its link analysis systems.
A regular link can come from a helpful article that genuinely recommends your content, or from a page created mainly to place links. Calling both links dofollow tells us very little about their overall quality.
Why Would a Website Use Nofollow?
Sometimes a website wants readers to be able to visit another page without treating that link as an ordinary endorsement for Google Search.
The publisher can add rel="nofollow" to express that preference, particularly when the more specific sponsored and UGC labels don’t apply.
For example, a writer might reference another website while discussing a claim without wanting to signal support for that source. The link can still be useful for readers who want to examine what was said.
The visitor experiences the link normally. The difference is how it has been qualified for search engines.
Does Google Completely Ignore Nofollow Links?
Not necessarily.
Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than an absolute instruction for every part of Google Search. This means the label helps Google decide how a link should be considered, but we cannot conclude that every nofollow backlink has exactly zero ranking influence.
For crawling, Google generally does not follow links marked with nofollow, sponsored, or ugc. However, the destination can still be discovered through another website, a sitemap, or other available links.
So adding nofollow to a link does not hide the destination from Google or prevent that page from appearing in search results.
It also doesn’t prevent people from clicking the link and visiting the destination.
How Are Sponsored and UGC Links Different?
Unlike nofollow, these two labels identify more specific circumstances surrounding a link.
Sponsored Links: When the Link Is Part of a Commercial Arrangement
A company might pay a website to feature one of its products. The article could contain a link to the product page, allowing readers to learn more or make a purchase.
Because the link is part of a paid placement, the publisher should identify that commercial relationship to Google.
The recommended label is rel="sponsored".
Commercial arrangements don’t always involve a straightforward advertising fee. Compensation may also involve products, services, or affiliate relationships.
For example, a blogger who earns a commission when readers purchase a product through an affiliate link has a financial relationship connected to that link.
Google recommends using sponsored for advertising and compensated placements. It also accepts nofollow for qualifying paid links, although sponsored is the preferred, more specific label.
Marking a sponsored link correctly doesn’t mean the advertisement is harmful. It helps distinguish a commercial placement from an ordinary editorial reference.
UGC Links: When Visitors Contribute the Content
Now consider a cooking website that allows visitors to leave comments beneath recipes.
Someone might share a useful baking tip and include a link to a guide explaining how to prepare dough.
The link was added by a visitor, not written directly into the recipe by the website’s publisher.
This is an example of user-generated content, commonly shortened to UGC.
Google recommends rel="ugc" for links appearing in user contributions such as comments and forum posts.
The distinction is about where the link came from. A forum link isn’t necessarily an advertisement, just as a sponsored link doesn’t have to appear in a forum.
The labels describe different circumstances, which is why they shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable names for the same thing.
Can a Link Have More Than One Rel Attribute Value?
Yes. One link can meet more than one description.
Consider a website where members publish their own articles. A member submits a post containing a link that is also part of a paid promotional arrangement.
The content was created by a user, but the link also has a commercial purpose.
In that situation, the website can combine the labels:
<a href="https://example.com/guide" rel="ugc sponsored">Read the guide</a>
Notice that there is still only one rel attribute. The values ugc and sponsored appear together inside it.
Google allows multiple values when more than one qualification applies. A publisher can also combine nofollow with another value where appropriate.
This matters because link attributes aren’t necessarily competing categories. They can describe different aspects of the same connection.
Which Link Attribute Should You Use?
Once you understand the differences, choosing the appropriate label becomes easier. The main question is how the link came to appear on the page.
| Situation | What to Use |
|---|---|
| You’re linking normally to a useful resource, without a special qualification. | A regular link. No qualifying rel value is needed. |
| You want to reference a page without signaling endorsement, and the more specific labels don’t apply. | rel="nofollow" |
| The link appears because of advertising, sponsorship, or compensation. | rel="sponsored" |
| A visitor posts the link in a comment or forum discussion. | rel="ugc" |
These are Google’s recommended approaches for common situations. A link may need multiple values when more than one condition applies.
Do These Labels Determine How Valuable a Backlink Is?
The label alone cannot tell you how much a backlink will help a page rank in Google.
A regular link can be considered by Google’s ranking systems, but that doesn’t guarantee it will improve the destination’s position in search results.
Likewise, the presence of nofollow, sponsored, or ugc doesn’t automatically mean a link is low quality, harmful, or useless to visitors.
Google describes these qualifying attributes as hints when considering links within Search. It doesn’t publish a formula that lets website owners calculate the ranking value of each link from its rel attribute.
The labels also don’t replace the other things that make a backlink worth examining, such as the page providing it, the content surrounding it, and how the link was created.
For a website owner, the practical priority is to describe the relationship accurately rather than choosing a label simply because it sounds more beneficial for SEO.
How Can You Check Which Attribute a Link Uses?
Now that you’ve seen the HTML examples, you can look for those same labels on an actual webpage.
On a desktop computer, open a page containing a link, right-click the linked text, and choose Inspect from your browser’s menu.
The browser will open its developer tools and usually highlight the HTML element associated with what you selected.
Look for the link’s <a> tag. Inside it, the href attribute identifies the destination, while a rel attribute, if present, may contain values such as nofollow, sponsored, or ugc.
If the link has no qualifying rel value, it’s generally an ordinary link, commonly described in SEO as dofollow.
You don’t need to understand every line of HTML to recognize the difference. Once you know what these attributes look like, you can identify how a link is marked without assuming that its appearance on the screen reveals how Google should treat it.
