For fifteen years the nofollow attribute had a simple reputation in SEO circles. It was the tag that switched a link off. Follow links passed value, nofollow links passed nothing, and link builders sorted prospects into those two buckets accordingly. Then in September 2019 Google announced a change that quietly dismantled that binary. Nofollow would become a hint rather than a strict directive, and two new attributes, sponsored and ugc, were introduced to describe paid and user-generated links more precisely. The change was easy to miss and its implications are still misunderstood, so it is worth unpacking exactly what happened and what it means for link strategy.

How AAMAX.CO Approaches Link Building

At AAMAX.CO we build link profiles that look like what they are: the natural footprint of a real business earning attention. That means digital PR, genuine editorial placements, resource and partnership links, local citations, and the mixture of followed and nofollowed links every credible site accumulates. Our search engine optimization work starts with the pages worth linking to, because acquisition is far easier when the asset deserves the link. We are a full service digital marketing company offering web development, digital marketing and SEO services worldwide, so we can build the asset and promote it. If your link profile looks unnatural or has stalled, hire AAMAX.CO for a full backlink audit and strategy.

What Changed In 2019

Google announced that from March 2020 for ranking purposes, and immediately for crawling and indexing signals, rel="nofollow" would be treated as a hint. Alongside it, rel="sponsored" was introduced for advertising and paid placements, and rel="ugc" for links inside user-generated areas such as comments and forum posts. Publishers were told they did not need to change existing nofollow markup, and that multiple values could be combined. Crucially, treating nofollow as a hint means Google may choose to consider a nofollowed link for crawling, indexing and ranking rather than ignoring it outright. Discretion replaced a hard rule.

Why Google Made The Change

Nofollow had been introduced in 2005 to combat comment spam, and it worked. But over the following years large publishers began applying nofollow indiscriminately to every external link as a defensive measure, which meant Google was discarding a huge volume of genuine editorial endorsement from some of the highest quality sites on the web. Moving to a hint model let Google recover that lost signal while still respecting publisher intent in most cases. The new attributes gave publishers a way to be honest about the nature of a link without simply switching it off entirely.

So Do Nofollow Links Help SEO

The practical answer is yes, but not in the way follow links do and not in a way you can predict for any individual link. Google may use a nofollowed link as a hint that helps it discover a page, understand what a page is about, or corroborate that an entity is being discussed across the web. Beyond that, nofollow links deliver value that has nothing to do with link equity at all. They send referral traffic, which converts. They build brand awareness among relevant audiences. They contribute to the diversity that makes a link profile look natural. And they often precede followed links, because journalists and bloggers discover sources through the same nofollowed placements everyone else reads.

The Natural Profile Argument

Any real website accumulates nofollowed links without trying. Social platforms, major news comment sections, forums, Wikipedia, review sites and countless content management defaults apply nofollow automatically. A site whose backlink profile consists almost entirely of followed links from guest posts and directories looks manufactured, because no organically popular site has that shape. Nofollow links are part of the noise floor of authenticity. Chasing only followed links produces exactly the pattern spam detection systems are built to notice, which is one of the strongest arguments against filtering prospects by link attribute.

Using The New Attributes Correctly On Your Own Site

The 2019 change also gave you obligations as a publisher. Use rel="sponsored" on any link that exists because of payment, exchange of goods, or an affiliate relationship, because undisclosed paid links that pass equity are a link scheme violation. Use rel="ugc" on links inside comments, reviews and forum contributions, optionally combining it with nofollow. Leave genuine editorial references followed, because linking out to credible sources is a normal quality signal and withholding it gains you nothing. Avoid the blanket approach of nofollowing every outbound link, which throws away useful context for search engines and tells users nothing.

What This Means For Link Building Today

Stop sorting prospects by attribute and start sorting by relevance, audience and editorial standards. A nofollowed mention in a respected industry publication read by your buyers is worth more to your business than a followed link on an irrelevant low-quality blog, both for direct revenue and for the secondary links and searches it triggers. Focus on being genuinely mentionable: original research, useful tools, distinctive opinions, real expertise and newsworthy company milestones. Then promote those assets to people who cover your space. The link attribute becomes an afterthought when the placement itself is valuable.

Auditing Your Link Profile

A healthy audit looks at more than counts. Examine the ratio of followed to nofollowed links and ask whether it looks plausible for your industry. Look at anchor text distribution, since heavy exact-match anchors are a far bigger risk than any nofollow question. Check the topical relevance of linking domains and whether they send actual referral traffic. Identify toxic patterns such as site-wide footer links, paid directories and private blog networks, and disavow only where there is genuine evidence of a manipulative pattern. Then align the whole picture with your wider digital marketing activity so PR, content and outreach reinforce each other.

The Verdict

The 2019 nofollow update ended the era of treating link attributes as a simple on-off switch. Nofollow links can help SEO because Google may treat them as hints, and they reliably help your business through traffic, awareness, profile diversity and the followed links they eventually attract. Mark up your own outbound links honestly with sponsored and ugc where appropriate, keep genuine editorial links followed, and evaluate every link opportunity on relevance and audience rather than on a single attribute. That approach has aged well since 2019 and will keep working as search continues to evolve.