Bing Treats Nofollow Link Attribute As A Hint, Always Has

Sep 11, 2019 - 8:17 am 1 by
Filed Under Bing SEO

Hints

With all this discussion around the changes to how Google treats the nofollow link attribute, Bing chimed in about how they treat it. Fabrice Canel from the Bing search team said on Twitter "we always treated the nofollow link attribute as a ‘hint’, making our own decision on trusting or not trusting."

So while Google always took it more like a directive for rankings, indexing and crawling. Bing always took it as a hint and may do what they want with it despite what attribute you slap on that link.

Now Google takes it as a hint for ranking, will take it as a hint for crawling and indexing in March. Bing has always taken it as a hint.

Fabrice Canel from Bing added "Please continue using this ‘hint’ and other link functions as sponsored and ugc as appropriate."

Here is his tweet:

To learn more about all the changes around nofollow and link attributes Google announced yesterday, see this story.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 10, 2025

Oct 10, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Search Ranking Volatility, AI Mode Expands Again, Business Profiles Insights, Bing Places Updates & Google and Microsoft Ad News

Oct 10, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New: Google Business Profile Report Negative Review Extortion Scams

Oct 10, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Missed Growth Opportunities Tab

Oct 10, 2025 - 7:41 am
Web Analytics

GA4 Surge In Organic Search Traffic But Search Console Flat

Oct 10, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Voice Search Now Powered By Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R)

Oct 10, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Everything Google Has Said On The Nofollow Link Attribute Change