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Glite Dictionary
🚫 Not followed by search 🏷️ A web tag 🔗 To block search
nofollow

nofollow

1 7.9
A label added to a web link to tell search engines not to follow it
  • noun
  • Texting
: nofollow
  • Adding a nofollow tag helps ensure that a website does not pass on its SEO value to the linked page.

Examples

  • The actual percentage of nofollow links on the web is a single-digit percentage, and it's pretty small.

    Blog text (11)

  • I'd also like to know if we should all just use nofollow on every link to avoid PageRank penalty.

    Blog text (22)

  • What things can we do to communicate to Google that we did not know that nofollow was necessary?

    Blog text (25)

  • Later, Google will just have to ignore nofollow as it will no longer add any value.

    Blog text (25)

  • I wonder what would happen if all links on the web became nofollow.

    Blog text (25)

  • But I can't see why I should put a nofollow on the link, though.

    Blog text (25)

  • You can never win this war with just a rel="nofollow."

    Blog text (25)

  • The idea of using nofollow links for secure/login required pages may not be necessary in my case.

    Blog text (29)

  • I get no page rank from these forums as they are all "nofollow."

    Blog text (25)

  • The particular software meta point allows content material to "INDEX," "NOINDEX," or simply "NOFOLLOW."

    Blog text (32)

Surface Forms

nofollow singular
nofollows plural

Morphology

nofollow = follow (semi-transparent) = no + follow

Formed from 'no' + 'follow' with a clear negation, but the noun sense referring to an HTML attribute value is a specialized technical term.

Etymology

Nofollow as a noun names the tag or mark you put on a web link, made from no ('not') and follow ('go after'), so it reads like a 'do not follow' sign for the web. This tells search engines not to follow that link or use it to affect a page's rank.