nofollow
Definition
nofollow is a link or robots hint that asks crawlers not to treat a link as an editorial endorsement for ranking credit.
By Vinespire Editorial Team, Editorial ·
This term is part of the full AI search glossary.
Full definition
On links, rel="nofollow" (and related values like sponsored or ugc) signals that the destination should not receive the usual endorsement effect. On meta robots, nofollow asks crawlers not to follow links on that page for discovery—though engines may still discover URLs other ways.
nofollow is not a guarantee of secrecy; it is a hint about crawling and ranking treatment. Use it for untrusted user-generated links, paid placements where required, and other non-endorsement cases per search guidelines.
AI systems may still fetch publicly linked pages regardless of nofollow when users or tools request them. See noindex, Meta Robots, and Canonical URL.
Example
<a href="https://example.com/partner" rel="nofollow sponsored">Partner offer</a>