Google: No Nofollow Linking Penalty

Jul 2, 2012 - 8:45 am 38 by

nofollowDo you have an awful lot of sites linking to you with the nofollow attribute appended to the link? Are you worried Google uses that as a signal to not trust your site? Google's John Mueller said don't worry, it won't hurt you.

In a Google Webmaster Help thread, John Mueller of Google said having a lot of links with nofollows pointing to you won't have a negative impact on your site.

John wrote:

Having links (even a large number of them) with rel=nofollow pointing to your site does not negatively affect your site. We take these links out of our PageRank calculations, and out of our algorithms when they use links.

It obviously won't help you either but it shouldn't hurt.

I am a bit surprised by this, because if 90% of the links pointing to my site were nofollowed, I'd think that would raise a red flag. Of course, assuming I had a substantial number of links.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: September 17, 2025

Sep 17, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Discover Tests Showing X Posts From Just Your Followers?

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:51 am
Other Search Engines

OpenAI Updates Search In ChatGPT: Factuality, Shopping & Formatting

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google: Searchers Want AI Summaries Over Links

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google Business API Q&A Feature Going Away November 3 (Changes Coming?)

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Ads

New Google Merchant Center Suspension Video Verification

Sep 17, 2025 - 7:11 am
 
Previous Story: Fake Google Webmaster Support Phone Calls