What Is Dofollow Link?

How a Dofollow Link Works

A dofollow link is the plainest thing in this whole vocabulary: it is an anchor tag with nothing added to hold it back. <a href="https://example.com">example</a> is a dofollow link. There is no attribute to insert, no value to set — a hyperlink is followable and credit-passing by default, and it stays that way unless a rel attribute such as nofollow, sponsored, or ugc intervenes to qualify it.

That default behavior is what gives the link its SEO weight. When a dofollow link points from one page to another, search engines can follow the connection and pass a share of ranking credit — link equity — to the destination, carried along the anchor text. Every genuine editorial link on the web is dofollow by default, which is exactly why the followable link has always been the currency of off-page SEO. Accumulating relevant, trusted dofollow backlinks is the core mechanic behind link building.

It helps to see the term for what it is. “Dofollow” is community jargon, coined only to have a word for the opposite of nofollow. Google’s official documentation never defines a dofollow value; it only describes the attributes that qualify a link. Absent one of those, the link is simply a normal link, and normal is followed.

Why “Dofollow” Is a Bit of a Myth

Because the word sounds like an attribute, people assume it is one. It is not. If you write <a href="..." rel="dofollow">, search engines encounter a rel value they do not recognize and ignore it — the link would have been followed anyway. Nothing you can add makes a link “more dofollow” than the default. This is the opposite of nofollow, which is a real, defined attribute that actively suppresses credit.

The practical consequence is that “dofollow backlinks,” a phrase you will see all over link-selling services, is a redundant way of saying “ordinary links.” What actually determines whether a followed link moves your rankings is the source: a dofollow link from a topically relevant, authoritative domain is worth far more than a hundred followed links from thin, unrelated pages. The attribute is not the lever; the linking site’s trust is.

Example of a Dofollow Link

The cleanest way to understand dofollow is by contrast with the attributes Google actually defines. On September 10, 2019, Google published “Evolving ‘nofollow’ — new ways to identify the nature of links,” introducing rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content to sit alongside the existing rel="nofollow". Every one of those three values exists to reduce a link’s ranking effect. Google published no counterpart value to grant it, because none is needed.

That asymmetry is the whole point. In Google’s model, links pass credit by default and attributes take it away. A dofollow link is what remains when none of the qualifying attributes are present. When Google’s guidance says the plain nofollow value is for links you’d “rather Google not associate your site with,” the unstated inverse is the dofollow case: a link you do associate yourself with, an editorial endorsement you are willing to make. Google reinforced this in the same 2019 announcement by treating even the qualifying attributes as hints, and by keeping the default — a followed, credit-passing link — as the baseline everything else modifies.

Dofollow Link vs Nofollow Link

The two are a matched pair: dofollow is the default, and a nofollow link is that default with a suppressing attribute added. For a decision-oriented walkthrough of which to use, see follow vs nofollow.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

A dofollow link is nothing more exotic than an ordinary link with no attribute holding it back, which is why it passes ranking credit by default. The name is SEO shorthand for standard link behavior, not a tag you apply — there is no rel=“dofollow”. What makes such a link valuable is the trust and relevance of the site giving it, not the presence of any special markup.