A link with no rel value is a followed link. Search engines may treat it as a vote for the site it points at, and pass ranking credit to it. Google asks you to mark links where that isn’t true.
| Value | Use it when | Example |
|---|---|---|
rel="sponsored" | You were paid, or given something, to place the link. | Advertising, paid placements, affiliate links. |
rel="ugc" | A visitor wrote the link, not you. | Comments, forum posts, reviews. |
rel="nofollow" | You can’t or won’t vouch for the site, and neither of the others fits. | A link to a source you are criticising, or one you didn’t choose. |
<a href="https://example.net" rel="sponsored">Partner offer</a>What Link Signals does with it
Every outbound link is recorded with how it is marked. A rel on the link counts, and so does a page-wide <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">. Where the same destination is linked from several pages, it counts as followed if any of those links is followed.
Then it looks at the links that have a real problem: Not safe, Needs review, or pointing at a domain that has lapsed or isn’t registered. For those it adds a Followed label if nothing stops them passing credit, a Passing credit filter on the report, and a What to do note on each one.
| The link | What the report says |
|---|---|
| Hidden or cloaked, and followed | Remove it. This is what Google’s spam policies describe, and it is rarely there on purpose. |
| Points at an unregistered or expired domain, and followed | Remove or replace it. Anyone can take over the domain, and your page would pass credit to them. |
| Not safe, and followed | Remove it. If you can’t, mark it rel="nofollow". |
| Needs review, and followed | Check it. If you don’t vouch for it, mark it nofollow, sponsored or ugc as fits. |
| Any of the above, already marked | A lower-priority note. The link passes no credit, but visitors can still follow it. |
What it can’t see
relset by JavaScript after the page loads, or sent only in anX-Robots-Tagresponse header.- Whether a link was paid for. Only you know that, so Link Signals never marks a link as paid on its own.
Questions
Should I nofollow every external link?
No. Linking to good sources you stand behind is normal, and followed links to them are fine. Mark the ones you don’t vouch for, or that were paid for or written by visitors.
Does nofollow remove a spam link’s harm?
It stops the link passing credit. It doesn’t explain how the link got there, and a hidden link you didn’t add means something on your site was changed, so find out how.
Where does Google say this?
In its documentation on qualifying outbound links and in its spam policies. Link Signals follows those; it isn’t affiliated with Google.
In your report
Ranking credit shows in three places in a report: on the Out of context links step of the Overview, as Passing ranking credit; the Followed chip and Passing credit tab in Findings; and the How your links are marked panel on the Inventory tab.
On the Overview
The Out of context links step shows a Passing ranking credit number when any of those links carry no nofollow, sponsored or ugc marker. Select it to open exactly those links. The advice adds that, if you keep any of them, they should be marked nofollow (sponsored if you were paid, ugc if a visitor wrote it) so they stop passing your credit. A link whose marker was never read is never reported as followed, so a report saved before link markers were recorded shows no number until a new scan.
In Findings
- An amber Followed chip means nothing on the link stops it passing ranking credit.
- A grey Nofollow, Sponsored or UGC chip shows how a flagged link is marked. When a link has more than one marker, sponsored wins over ugc, and ugc over nofollow.
- The detail panel’s What to do section gives a headline, a reason and, where one helps, the attribute to add. It ends “On the page it is marked: Followed”, with a link to this page.
- A marker does not make a bad link safe. Even a nofollowed link to a lapsed domain gets a note saying it is still worth replacing, because visitors can still follow it.
On the Inventory tab
The How your links are marked panel shows four chips with counts: Followed, Nofollow, Sponsored and UGC. They cover every link the scan checked, not only the flagged ones, so a long list of Followed links is normal and is not a warning in itself. The panel appears only when markers were recorded for the scan, and its hint repeats that followed links can pass credit and the other three tell search engines you do not vouch for the site.
How this counts in your LinkSignal
Marking a link nofollow, sponsored or ugc changes how its credit is read, and the ranking credit going to flagged links panel is built on the same idea. It shows how much of a site’s credit goes to links a scan flagged, and it appears next to your site’s external LinkSignal in the report without being part of the score. LinkSignal is Link Signals’ own metric, worked out only from what this tool finds, and it is not connected to any search engine or third-party score. The LinkSignal overview explains where each sits.
Run a scan and the summary shows how many links are followed, nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
