"Is it dofollow?" is usually the first question founders ask about a directory or a backlink. The term is a bit misleading, because there's no dofollow attribute in HTML. A dofollow link is simply a link that hasn't been marked otherwise: search engines are free to follow it and to count it.
Dofollow vs nofollow: what's in the code
Here's a dofollow link. Notice that there's nothing special about it:
<a href="https://example.com/">Example</a>And here's the same link marked nofollow:
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="nofollow">Example</a>Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links defines three values a site can add to the rel attribute:
| Value | What Google says it's for |
|---|---|
sponsored | "Links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links)." |
ugc | "User-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts." |
nofollow | "When other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site." |
A link with none of these values is a dofollow link, sometimes called a followed link.
How Google treats dofollow and nofollow links
Until 2019, Google didn't count nofollow links as a signal at all. When it announced a change that year, Google wrote that sponsored, ugc and nofollow "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search".
In practice, a dofollow link is the kind that can pass ranking credit, and the kind SEO tools count. Ahrefs, for example, only counts followed links in its Domain Rating: "if a website is only linking to you via nofollow links, it won't increase your DR" (Ahrefs).
That doesn't make nofollow links worthless. They still send visitors, and visitors who like your product are where editorial, dofollow links come from.
Dofollow links on startup directories
Because the difference matters, we check the link on a live listing for every directory we track. In October 2026, 137 of the 197 directories we could check (70%) gave a dofollow link, and 60 gave nofollow. Two findings surprise most people:
- A high DR doesn't mean dofollow. The median DR of the nofollow directories (53) was higher than that of the dofollow ones (48), and 17 directories with a DR of 70 or more gave only nofollow links.
- Some links come with conditions. Six directories only give a dofollow link on a paid plan, and nine tie their listing or link to showing their badge on your site.
We break the numbers down by category and price in Dofollow or nofollow? What we found across 246 startup directories.
How to check if a link is dofollow
- Look at the code. Right-click the link, choose Inspect, and look for a
relattribute on the<a>tag. Nonofollow,ugcorsponsoredmeans it's followed. - Check the page too. A followed link on a page marked
noindex, blocked in robots.txt or pointing its canonical elsewhere may still not count. - Use a checker. Our free dofollow link checker takes a page URL, finds every link to your domain and shows its rel value, plus whether noindex, robots.txt or a canonical cancels it.
When a link should not be dofollow
If you run a site yourself, Google's guidance on qualifying links applies to you: mark paid placements with sponsored and user-posted links (comments, forum posts, profiles) with ugc. Links you choose to give because they help your readers can stay as they are.
Google's spam policies also 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, which is worth knowing when a site asks you to add a link back to it.
Common myths
- "Any dofollow link helps." Links from irrelevant or low-quality sites are at best ignored. Relevance and real readers matter more than the attribute.
- "Nofollow links are useless." They're hints, they send traffic, and a natural link profile has plenty of them.
- "More dofollow links always means higher rankings." Links from many different relevant sites help; dozens from one site, or from link farms, don't.