Dofollow link

What makes a link dofollow

There is no dofollow attribute. A link is dofollow by default: an anchor tag with an href and nothing in rel that asks search engines to hold back. The moment a page adds rel="nofollow", rel="ugc" or rel="sponsored", the link stops being a plain editorial vote.

Values such as noopener and noreferrer are about browser security and privacy. They do not change how a search engine treats the link, so a link with rel="noopener noreferrer" is still dofollow.

Why founders care about them

Google treats links from other sites as one of its signals for how much a page can be trusted. A dofollow link from a relevant, crawled and indexed page passes some of that trust, often called link equity, to your site. A new domain with no links at all has a hard time ranking for anything, so the first handful of real dofollow links matters more than the hundredth.

Quality beats count. One dofollow link from a page that ranks, gets traffic and is about your topic does more than dozens of links from pages nobody visits. Links that are bought, swapped in bulk or hidden in footers can be ignored, or worse, treated as a link scheme.

How Aback Launch handles them

Every approved listing on Aback Launch links to the founder's website. The link starts as nofollow and becomes dofollow once our badge is verified on the founder's site. A weekly check confirms the badge is still live. Paying never changes the rel value, because a paid dofollow link is exactly what search engines call a link scheme. Ads are always marked sponsored.

Example

<a href="https://example.com">Example</a> is dofollow. <a href="https://example.com" rel="noopener">Example</a> is also dofollow. <a href="https://example.com" rel="nofollow">Example</a> is not.

Questions people ask

How do I check if a link is dofollow?

Look at the rel attribute of the anchor tag. If it has no nofollow, ugc or sponsored value, it is dofollow. Our free nofollow checker lists every link on a page with its rel value.

Are dofollow links from launch platforms worth it?

They help when the page that links to you is indexed and stays live. A launch page that is noindexed, or removed after a week, passes little or nothing. Check both before you rely on a platform for links.