A backlink is dofollow when the rel attribute on its <a> tag contains none of nofollow, ugc or sponsored. The quickest check is to right-click the link, choose Inspect and read the tag. Then check the page around it: a followed link may still not count if the page is set to noindex or blocked by robots.txt, or if the link goes through the directory's own redirect.
The fastest methods, by situation:
- One link, right now: right-click it, choose Inspect, read rel.
- What crawlers get first: view the page source (Ctrl+U) and search for your domain.
- The link and the page in one pass: paste the page into our free dofollow link checker.
- Many backlinks: find them in Search Console's Links report, then check the ones that matter.
Disclosure: DirPilot sells directory submissions, and the checker in method 4 is our own free tool. Every other method here works without it.
What makes a link "dofollow"
There's no dofollow attribute in HTML. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links says regular links don't need a rel attribute, and lists three values a site can add when it doesn't want to vouch for a link: sponsored, ugc and nofollow. A backlink with none of them is followed. Our glossary entry has the full definition.
Two caveats. Since 2019, Google has said all three values "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search" (Google Search Central), so a followed link is eligible to pass ranking credit, not guaranteed to. And signals on the page can cancel a followed link, so reading rel is only half the job.
This guide is about checking a link that already exists. Which directories tend to give followed links is covered in what we found across 246 startup directories.
rel values you'll run into
| rel value | What it means | Where you'll see it | Followed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| none | A regular link | Editorial links, many directory listings | Yes |
| nofollow | The site doesn't want to be associated with the linked page | Links a site won't vouch for; older paid links | No (a hint) |
| sponsored | An ad or paid placement | Paid listings, sponsorships | No (a hint) |
| ugc | Posted by users | Comments, forum posts, user profiles | No (a hint) |
| noopener, noreferrer | Browser behavior for new tabs and the Referer header | Links that open in a new tab | Yes, on their own |
Method 1: Inspect the link in your browser
- Open the page that links to you in a private window, so you see what visitors see, not a signed-in view.
- Right-click your link (the name, logo or "Visit website" button) and choose Inspect. In Safari, turn on the developer features in Settings first.
- If the highlighted element is an <img> or <span>, look one level up for the <a> that wraps it.
- Read the href (does it point at your domain?) and the rel.
- Repeat for every link to you on the page. rel is set per link, so a logo and a button can differ.
What you'll see:
<!-- Followed -->
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Visit website</a>
<!-- Not followed -->
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="nofollow">Visit website</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="sponsored">Visit website</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc">Visit website</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="nofollow noopener">Visit website</a>
Read every word in rel: one nofollow, ugc or sponsored is enough. Google accepts values separated by spaces or commas, and MDN notes they're case-insensitive, so rel="NoFollow Noopener" is still nofollow. noopener and noreferrer aren't values Google lists; MDN describes them as controlling how a new tab opens and whether the Referer header is sent, so they don't change follow status. A made-up rel="dofollow" does nothing either: a link with no supported rel value is just a link "without a defined relationship", in MDN's words.
One limit: Inspect shows the page after JavaScript has run, which isn't always what a crawler gets first.
Method 2: View the source and search for your domain
The page source is the HTML the server sends, before any script runs.
- Press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U in Chrome on a Mac), or type view-source: before the address.
- Search (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) for your domain without https:// or www, such as yourproduct.com.
- For each match, check that it sits inside an <a href="..."> and read its rel. A domain shown as plain text isn't a link.
- Also search for robots and canonical. You'll need both in method 3.
If Inspect shows your link but the source doesn't, a script adds it after the page loads. Google renders JavaScript, so it may still see the link, but its robots meta tag documentation says rendering "is not guaranteed". A link in the server HTML is the safer bet. If neither view shows your domain, the link probably goes through the directory's own redirect (method 3), or there isn't one.
Method 3: Check the page signals that cancel a followed link
A followed link on a page search engines won't index or can't fetch is unlikely to count. Five things to check:
Robots meta tag. In the source, look for name="robots" and name="googlebot":
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<meta name="googlebot" content="nofollow">
noindex keeps the page out of search results. nofollow here means "Do not follow the links on this page", every link at once. none means both. Google combines the negative rules across these tags, and respects them in the body as well as the head.
X-Robots-Tag header. The same rules can sit in the HTTP response, where the source won't show them. In developer tools, open the Network tab, reload, click the first request and read its response headers. Or from a terminal:
curl -sIL https://directory.example/listing/yourproduct
That prints the headers of the page and every redirect hop. Look for X-Robots-Tag: noindex or X-Robots-Tag: googlebot: nofollow, and check that the last status code is 200.
robots.txt. Open https://directory.example/robots.txt. A Disallow rule matching the listing's path, such as Disallow: /listing/, stops Googlebot fetching the page unless a more specific Allow overrides it. If there's a User-agent: Googlebot group, Googlebot follows that one instead of *. Google can't read the links on a blocked page, and notes that its noindex and nofollow rules won't be found either.
Canonical. Look for <link rel="canonical" href="...">. If it names a different address, such as a category page, search engines may index that page instead of the one with your link.
Redirect links. Some directories link to their own page, which forwards visitors to you:
<a href="https://directory.example/go/yourproduct">Visit website</a>
<a href="https://directory.example/out?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyourproduct.com">Visit website</a>
Both point at the directory, not at you. Searching for yourproduct.com still finds the second, because the dots aren't encoded. For the first, run curl -sI on it and read the Location header. Nobody outside Google can tell you how Google treats such links, so don't log one as a followed link to your site.
Method 4: Use our free dofollow link checker
Our dofollow link checker covers the checks from methods 2 and 3 in one pass, with no sign-up. Paste the page that should link to you and your domain, and it reads the page the way a crawler first sees it. It checks six things: the rel on every link to your domain (image links included), page-wide noindex or nofollow rules in the HTML or X-Robots-Tag header (including Googlebot-only ones), robots.txt, the canonical, the HTTP status and redirects, and links routed through the directory's own /go/ or ?url= pages. It returns one of five verdicts:
| Verdict | What it means | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| Followed | No qualifier on your link, and nothing on the page tells search engines to ignore it | Check later that the page is indexed |
| Nofollow, ugc or sponsored | Search engines are asked not to treat it as an endorsement | Judge the listing on the visitors it sends |
| Cancelled by the page | The link is followed, but the page is noindex, nofollows every link or is blocked by robots.txt | Expect little from it in search |
| No link found | The HTML has no link to your domain | Look for a JavaScript link or a redirect, then check by hand |
| Turned away | The site refused the checker, often with HTTP 403 or 429 | Use method 1 in your browser |
It shares method 2's blind spot: it reads the HTML the server sends, so a link added only by JavaScript comes back as "No link found". And it can't see inside Google, so it can't tell you whether the page is indexed or what the link is worth. It identifies itself as DirPilotBot, doesn't try to get around blocks, and doesn't save the pages or domains you enter.
You'll meet these cases on real directories. When we checked sites in October 2026 for our SaaS directories roundup, GetApp's "visit website" button had no link in the page code, Software Advice routed clicks through a pay-per-click URL on capterra.com, and G2 blocked our automated check.
Method 5: Check many backlinks at once
Google Search Console. The Links report shows what Google itself has found: your top linking sites, most linked pages and top linking text, with an export. But Google's help page says it doesn't specify whether a link is nofollow, and that it shows a sample rather than every link. Use it to find the pages that link to you, then check the important ones with methods 1 to 4.
SEO tools and extensions. Third-party backlink tools crawl the web themselves, and many label each link's type; Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, for one, is free for sites you verify. Their index isn't Google's, so treat what they show as a lead to confirm. Extensions that highlight nofollow links read the page in your browser, like Inspect, so assume they don't see headers or robots.txt unless they say so.
For a handful of listings, a spreadsheet is enough. Our guide to submitting your startup to directories has a log you can copy.
Which method to use
| Method | What it catches | What it misses | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspect | rel on the rendered link, JavaScript links | Headers, robots.txt, server HTML | One link, quickly |
| View source | rel, robots meta, canonical, redirect links | JavaScript links, headers, robots.txt | What crawlers get first |
| Headers and robots.txt | X-Robots-Tag, status, redirects, crawl blocks | The link itself | Followed links that don't seem to count |
| DirPilot checker | All six checks at once | JavaScript-only links, bot-blocking sites, indexing | A listing page |
| Search Console | Sites Google found linking to you | Link type, links outside its sample | Finding links to check |
| SEO tools, extensions | Link type across many links | Google's view, recent changes | Watching links over time |
What to do when a link turns out nofollow
Judge it on visitors. A nofollow, ugc or sponsored link still sends visitors, the listing can still help people find you, and Google may still crawl the link. Just don't expect ranking credit: of links marked ugc and nofollow, Google said in 2019 that it would "generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes".
Don't pay to switch it. Google's link spam policy lists "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as spam, and says paid links are fine when marked nofollow or sponsored. Paying for faster review or a featured spot is reasonable; paying only for a followed link is what the policy describes.
Ask only when something is wrong. A polite note makes sense when the listing points at the wrong page, the link is broken, or the rel contradicts what the directory says publicly. Don't ask a site to drop ugc or sponsored from links that really are user-submitted or paid: Google recommends those values. And if a directory follows your link only when you show its badge, ask whether the badge can be nofollow, since Google's spam policies count a required link as link spam unless you're free to qualify it.
For where a new product's links come from, followed or not, see how to get your first backlinks.
A checklist for directory listings after you submit
About a month after your listings go live, run each one through this:
- It's live when you open it in a private window.
- Every link to you points at the right page, without a broken tracking parameter.
- None of those links carries nofollow, ugc or sponsored.
- The link is in the page source, not only added by JavaScript.
- No noindex or nofollow in the robots meta tag or X-Robots-Tag, no robots.txt block, and a canonical pointing at the page itself.
- It's indexed: search Google for its address, or find it in the Links report.
- The result and date are in your log, since directories can change their link policy at any time.
Still choosing where to submit? Our free dofollow directories list only includes directories where we've seen a followed link on a live listing, and every page in our directory data shows what we checked and when. For startups, start with the best startup directories or build a directory shortlist. Then check your own listing anyway: a list records one listing on one date.
FAQ
Does rel="noopener noreferrer" make a link nofollow?
No. Those values control what the browser does when a link opens a new tab, and whether it sends the Referer header. Only nofollow, ugc and sponsored qualify a link for Google, and adding rel="dofollow" changes nothing.
Can a nofollow backlink still help?
Yes, just not as a ranking signal you can count on. It sends visitors, and visitors who like your product are where editorial, followed links tend to come from.
Can I check whether Google actually counts a link?
No one outside Google can. You can confirm that the link is followed, that the page can be fetched and indexed, and that Google has found the link. Whether Google gives it weight depends on the page, the site and how natural the link looks. Domain rating won't settle it: DR describes a whole site, not one link to you (see what a good domain rating is).
How often should I re-check my backlinks?
A few weeks after each listing goes live, then whenever you update your listings. A check is a snapshot: a directory can switch to nofollow or add a redirect later. The dofollow link checker makes re-checks quick.
Rather we did the checking?
The checker stays free. If you'd rather not submit and check listings one by one, DirPilot does it for you: we submit your product by hand, write a description for each directory, and check every link before we report it.
- Economy, $99: 30+ free, medium-DR directories.
- Business, $149: 60+ high-DR free and paid directories, listing fees included.
- First, $199: 100+ directories, plus help on launch day.
Each plan is a one-time payment, done by hand, and work starts within one business day. Compare the plans.