LinkWhat the result means
| Result | What we found | Does the link count? |
|---|---|---|
| Dofollow | A link to your site with no nofollow, sponsored or ugc, on a page that allows its links to be followed. | Yes. |
| Nofollow | The link carries rel="nofollow", or the whole page is set to nofollow. | No authority is passed. |
| Sponsored | The link carries rel="sponsored", the label for paid placements. | Treated like nofollow. |
| UGC | The link carries rel="ugc", the label for comments and forum posts. | Treated like nofollow. |
| No link | The page loads, but its HTML has no link to your site. | There is nothing to count. |
| Unreachable | The site blocked the checker or did not answer. | Unknown. Open the page yourself. |
How the checker decides
It downloads the page once, as a search engine would, and reads the HTML that comes back. Every <a> element whose address points to your site is a match. For each match it reads the rel attribute: sponsored, ugc and nofollow make the link not followed, anything else leaves it followed. When a page links to you more than once, the result shows a followed link if there is one, because that is the one that counts.
Then it looks at the page itself. A robots nofollow in a meta tag or in the X-Robots-Tag header switches off every link on the page, and a noindex keeps the page out of search results, so both are reported next to the link. If you only want that second part, use the noindex checker.
If a link you paid for is nofollow
- Check what you agreed. Find the order or the email where the placement was described. If it said dofollow or did not mention attributes at all, you have a case.
- Look at the page yourself. View the page source and search for your domain, so you can quote the exact line to the publisher.
- Write to the vendor, short and specific. Name the page, quote the link as it is now, say what was agreed and ask for a date by which it will be fixed.
- Check again after the date. A fix that is promised is not a fix. If nothing changes, ask for a replacement placement or your money back.
Doing this once is easy. Doing it for every link you bought, every week, is the part people skip, and it is what LinkRot does for you. Email templates for the vendor are in how to find and recover lost backlinks, and the full delivery checklist is in how to check a paid backlink.
Questions about dofollow links
What is a dofollow link?
A link that search engines are allowed to count. There is no rel="dofollow" attribute: a link is followed by default and stops being followed when it carries rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc", or when the whole page is set to nofollow.
How do I check if a backlink is dofollow?
Enter your site and the page that links to you above. The checker downloads the page, finds every link that points to your site and reads its rel attribute. By hand: open the page, right-click the link, choose Inspect and look at rel.
Is sponsored the same as nofollow?
For the value of the link, yes. Google added rel="sponsored" for paid placements and rel="ugc" for user content in 2019 and treats all three as hints not to pass authority through the link.
The link has no nofollow, but the result says the page is nofollow. Why?
A page can carry a robots nofollow in a meta tag or in an HTTP header. It applies to every link on the page, so your link is not followed even though its own rel is clean.
The checker says there is no link, but I can see it in my browser.
The checker reads the HTML the server sends and does not run JavaScript. A link that a script adds after the page loads is invisible to it, and often to search engines too. Open the page source (not Inspect) and search for your domain.
How many pages can I check?
5 pages per check and 25 per hour, without an account. The addresses you enter are not stored.
Why would a link I paid for turn nofollow?
The usual reasons: the publisher changed its policy for paid content, a plugin or a redesign put a blanket nofollow on external links, or an editor cleaned up old articles. It rarely comes with a notice, which is why it pays to look again after the first month.