“rel” is one of the attributes supported by hyperlinks. Before Google introduced the “sponsored” value for the “rel” attribute this month, nofollow and dofollow were the commonly used values. Links using the rel=”nofollow”/”dofollow” attributes are widely known as nofollow or dofollow URLs.
DF links pass page rank to linked documents. Searchbots follow these URLs. NF hyperlinks don’t pass the link juice but they may reduce the page rank flowing to other URLs. It tells Googlebot that the link should be ignored or not considered for ranking the page of your website. Google recommends webmasters to use the rel=nofollow attribute only for URLs that make you money (affiliate URLs, etc).
DF links are used for internal links, and links of the pages of a website that you don’t own. External dofollow URLs should point to point to relevant pages only. If you don’t do so, Googlebot may put your website to the list of sites that are selling backlinks. Sites engaged in the business of selling or buying links suffer from the Google Penguin algorithm.
Finding nofollow links on your entire website
One of the special features of WebsiteCrawler is its ability to find nofollow URLs. WC makes you aware of the pages on your site that have the most number of links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute.
To access this report, create your WebsiteCrawler.org account and follow the instructions displayed on the screen. Once your site has been crawled, you should navigate to your account’s dashboard, click on the project name and then click the “Nofollow Links” report.
This report displays two columns – Link and the Page Where the link was found. The first column displays a count of nofollow URLs WC has found and the other column displays the URL of the page on your website where the link was found.
Now, to see the links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, copy the page URL from column 2. Now, open the “Link Data” report page and paste the URL you’ve copied in the textbox. Now, choose the “Nofollow Links” option from the dropdown list and click the “Submit” button.
