Dofollow link HTML code is a plain <a href> tag with no nofollow, ugc or sponsored in its rel attribute. There's nothing extra to add: a link is followed unless it's marked otherwise. To mark a link, add one of Google's three values, alone or combined.
<!-- Followed ("dofollow") -->
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>
<!-- Not followed -->
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="nofollow">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="sponsored">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc nofollow">YourProduct</a>
- Followed: no rel, or a rel with none of the three values, such as noopener noreferrer.
- Not followed: nofollow, ugc or sponsored anywhere in the rel, in any capitalization.
- rel="dofollow": doesn't exist, and does nothing.
- Followed means eligible: Google treats all three values as hints, and it can still ignore a followed link.
Disclosure: DirPilot sells directory submissions, and the dofollow link checker mentioned below is our own free tool. The rules here come from Google's and MDN's documentation.
Why there's no rel="dofollow"
"Dofollow" is SEO shorthand, not HTML. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links says that for regular links "that you expect Google to fetch and parse without any qualifications, you don't need to add a rel attribute." It lists three values for everything else: sponsored, ugc and nofollow. As our glossary entry on dofollow links puts it, a dofollow link is "simply the absence of the others."
So whether you search for "dofollow", "do follow" or "followed", the link HTML is the same. If you write rel="dofollow" anyway, MDN's rel reference explains what happens: when none of a link's rel values are supported, <a> elements "will still create links, but without a defined relationship." Google doesn't list dofollow, so it adds no signal. These three links are all followed:
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="dofollow">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="follow">YourProduct</a>
A made-up value can't cancel a real one, either. rel="dofollow nofollow" is still nofollow, because one qualifier is enough. And only the site that publishes a link decides its rel, so there's no HTML dofollow code you can add to someone else's page.
Copy-paste snippets for each kind of link
Pick the snippet by what the link is, not by what you'd like it to pass:
| The link is... | rel to use | Followed? |
|---|---|---|
| A normal link you chose to give | none | Yes |
| A link that opens in a new tab | noopener or noopener noreferrer | Yes |
| An ad, sponsorship or paid placement | sponsored (or nofollow) | No (a hint) |
| Posted by a user: comment, forum post, profile | ugc | No (a hint) |
| A link you'd rather not vouch for | nofollow | No (a hint) |
| Paid and posted by a user | ugc sponsored | No (a hint) |
A plain followed link
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>
That's the whole "dofollow link HTML". Google's own example of a regular link has no rel either.
A followed link that opens in a new tab
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">YourProduct</a>
Still followed. MDN describes noopener as making the link behave as if window.opener were null, and noreferrer as sending no Referer header (it implies noopener too). Both are browser behavior, not Google qualifiers. One side effect if you're the site being linked: with noreferrer, the visit arrives without a referrer, so your analytics may not credit the site that sent it.
rel="nofollow"
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="nofollow">YourProduct</a>
Google says to use it "when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site."
rel="sponsored"
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="sponsored">YourProduct</a>
For "advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links)". Google adds that nofollow is "still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred."
rel="ugc"
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc">YourProduct</a>
For "user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts". Launch boards use it too: Product Hunt puts rel="ugc" on its Visit links.
Combined values
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc nofollow">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="sponsored nofollow">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="ugc,nofollow">YourProduct</a>
You can stack values. Google's 2019 announcement calls rel="ugc sponsored" "a perfectly valid attribute", and says adding nofollow to the newer values lets you "be backwards-compatible with services that don't support the new attributes." Google accepts a space- or comma-separated list, but MDN describes rel as "an unordered set of unique space-separated keywords", so spaces are the safer habit. Order doesn't matter, and one qualifier anywhere in the list makes the link not followed.
Capitals don't matter
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="NoFollow">YourProduct</a>
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/" rel="SPONSORED noopener">YourProduct</a>
MDN: "Like all HTML keyword attribute values, these values are case-insensitive." Neither link above is followed.
An image link
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">
<img src="/logos/yourproduct.png" alt="YourProduct">
</a>
The rel goes on the <a>, never on the <img>. For an image link, the alt text does the job of anchor text, so your brand name works better than "logo".
What each rel value means
| rel value | What it means | When sites use it | Followed? |
|---|---|---|---|
| none | A regular link | Editorial links, many directory listings | Yes |
| nofollow | The site doesn't vouch for the linked page | Links it won't endorse; older paid and user links | No (a hint) |
| sponsored | An ad or paid placement | Paid listings, sponsorships, ads | No (a hint) |
| ugc | Posted by users | Comments, forum posts, launch boards | No (a hint) |
| noopener | New tab can't reach the page that opened it | Links with target="_blank" | Yes |
| noreferrer | No Referer header; also acts as noopener | Often paired with noopener | Yes |
| external | The linked page is on another site | Styling links that leave the site | Yes |
| dofollow, follow | Nothing: not a value Google lists | Copied from SEO advice | Yes, because nothing qualifies it |
"A hint" has a specific meaning. In 2019 Google said sponsored, ugc and nofollow "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search", and nofollow became a hint for crawling and indexing on March 1, 2020. Of ugc and nofollow links, it said it would "generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes." Its current docs say qualified links "will generally not be followed", though the pages they point to "may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites." The flip side: a followed link is eligible to pass ranking credit, not guaranteed to.
What directory listing links usually look like in the source
Most listing pages share a layout: logo, product name, a short description and a "Visit website" button. Each link is separate and carries its own rel. An illustrative listing, not any one directory's code:
<article class="listing">
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/?ref=directory">
<img src="/logos/yourproduct.png" alt="YourProduct">
</a>
<h1>YourProduct</h1>
<p>Invoicing for freelancers.</p>
<a class="btn" href="https://yourproduct.com/?ref=directory"
target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Visit website</a>
</article>
What to read in it:
- Every <a> on its own. Here the logo link is followed and the button isn't.
- The href before the rel. A tracking parameter like ?ref=directory still points at your domain, which is fine.
- The plan you're on. Google asks for paid placements to carry sponsored or nofollow, but some directories give a followed link only on a paid or featured plan. Our dofollow vs nofollow study puts the advice plainly: "pay for exposure, not for a link attribute."
Some patterns look like a link to you but aren't:
<!-- Points at the directory's own redirect, not at 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>
<!-- No link to you at all -->
<button data-url="https://yourproduct.com/">Visit website</button>
<p>Website: yourproduct.com</p>
The first two link to the directory's page, which forwards visitors to you. Nobody outside Google can say how Google treats those, so don't log them as followed links to your site. The last two aren't links: a script opens your site, or the address is plain text.
You'll meet all of these. In our October 2026 checks, Product Hunt's Visit links carried rel="ugc", an EU-Startups sample profile showed the website as plain text, GetApp's "visit website" button had no link in the page code, and Software Advice routed clicks through a pay-per-click URL on capterra.com.
For which directories tend to link dofollow, see the study above and our free dofollow directories list, which only includes directories where we've seen a followed link on a live listing. Every page in our directory data shows what we checked and when. To see a listing next to other kinds of backlink, read our backlink examples.
Page-level code that cancels a followed link
A clean <a href> isn't the whole story. One line elsewhere on the page can cancel every link on it:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">
<meta name="googlebot" content="none">
Google's robots meta tag documentation defines nofollow there as "Do not follow the links on this page", and none as "Equivalent to noindex, nofollow". The same rules can arrive in an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, which the source won't show, and a robots.txt block or a canonical pointing elsewhere can keep the page out of the index. Big sites do this too: on DEV Community, one of 11 new posts we checked carried a page-wide noindex, nofollow tag.
How to read the tag on a live page
Right-click the link, choose Inspect and read the <a> (go one level up if Inspect highlights the <img>). View source (Ctrl+U) shows the HTML before scripts run. Or paste the page and your domain into our free dofollow link checker: it checks six things, from each link's rel to robots rules, robots.txt, the canonical and redirects, and returns one of five verdicts. The full walkthrough is in how to check dofollow backlinks.
Common mistakes
- Writing rel="dofollow". It changes nothing. Removing the qualifier is what makes a link followed.
- Reading noopener as nofollow. They look alike and do different jobs. noopener noreferrer alone leaves a link followed; nofollow noopener isn't followed.
- Judging by what's on screen. "Visit website" looks the same as a followed link, a nofollow link, a redirect or a script. Only the code tells you.
- Checking one link per page. The logo, the name and the button can each carry a different rel.
- Ignoring sponsored on paid placements. If you paid for a placement, sponsored is what Google asks for. If a paid spot's main selling point is a followed link, Google's link spam policy is the reason to think twice.
- Assuming high DR means dofollow. Product Hunt (DR 91) uses ugc and Medium (DR 94) is nofollow in our records; in our study, DR didn't predict link type. What a good domain rating is covers what DR does tell you.
When to mark links on your own site
Founders publish too, and Google's guidance applies to your own outbound links:
<!-- A link you were paid to include -->
<a href="https://partner.example/" rel="sponsored">Partner</a>
<!-- A link in a user's comment -->
<a href="https://commenter.example/" rel="ugc">Commenter's site</a>
<!-- A link you chose because it helps readers -->
<a href="https://useful.example/">A useful guide</a>
- Paid or sponsored: Google's 2019 FAQ says "Any link that is clearly an ad or sponsored should use sponsored or nofollow". Elsewhere, mistakes are mild: "There's no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links."
- User-posted: ugc. Google adds that you "might remove this attribute from links posted by members or users who have consistently made high-quality contributions over time."
- Editorial links: leave them plain.
- Your own pages: to stop Google crawling a page on your site, Google points to the robots.txt disallow rule, not nofollow; to keep a page out of search, noindex.
- Badges you ask others to show: let them qualify the link. Google's spam policies list "requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of qualifying the outbound link" as link spam.
FAQ
What is the HTML for a dofollow link?
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>. Any <a href> without nofollow, ugc or sponsored in its rel is followed, and target="_blank" or rel="noopener noreferrer" doesn't change that.
Does rel="dofollow" work?
No. It isn't among the values Google lists or the keywords in MDN's rel reference, so the link behaves as if it had no rel.
Does rel="noopener noreferrer" make a link nofollow?
No. Those values control how a new tab opens and whether the Referer header is sent. A link with only those values is followed.
Can I combine nofollow and sponsored?
Yes. rel="sponsored nofollow" is valid, and so is rel="ugc sponsored". Google says adding nofollow keeps you compatible with services that don't support the newer values.
How do I check a directory listing's HTML?
Inspect the link or view the source, or paste the listing into our dofollow link checker, which also checks robots rules, the canonical and redirects. Step by step: how to check dofollow backlinks.
Are nofollow directory links useless?
No. They send visitors, and Google treats nofollow as a hint. A good Product Hunt launch can do more than several quiet followed listings. Our best startup directories ranking shows which give a followed link, and the catches attached.
Rather hand it over?
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