A directory says your listing gets a dofollow link. A guest post host says the same. Half the time, the link that actually ships passes nothing. Checking takes thirty seconds, so check every one.
What "dofollow" actually means
There is no rel="dofollow" attribute. A dofollow link is simply an anchor with no restricting rel value:
<a href="https://yourproduct.com">Your Product</a>
The three values that restrict it:
| rel value | Meaning | Passes ranking signal |
|---|---|---|
nofollow | "I do not vouch for this" | Treated as a hint, usually no |
sponsored | Paid or affiliate placement | No |
ugc | Written by a user, not the site | Usually no |
Since 2019 Google treats all three as hints rather than hard rules, so a nofollow link can occasionally count. Plan as if it never does.
rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer" are security attributes. They do not affect link equity, so a link with only those is still dofollow.
Three ways to check
1. A dofollow backlink checker
Paste the page that should link to you and your domain. The checker fetches the raw HTML, finds every anchor pointing at you, and reports the rel on each one plus the page's robots directives.
Free toolBacklink VerifierCheck whether a page really links to your domain, what rel attribute the link carries, and whether the page is indexable at all.This is the fastest option and the only one that also catches the page-level traps below.
2. View source
Open the page, press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac), search for your domain. Read the rel on the anchor. Then search the <head> for <meta name="robots".
Use view source, not Inspect Element. Inspect shows the DOM after JavaScript ran, which may include links a crawler never sees.
3. Browser extensions
Extensions that highlight nofollow links are handy for scanning a page, but they read the rendered DOM and ignore response headers. Fine for a glance, wrong for a final answer.
The traps that cancel a dofollow anchor
A clean anchor is necessary, not sufficient. Each of these silently zeroes the link:
Page-level meta robots nofollow. <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> applies to every link on the page, whatever each anchor says.
X-Robots-Tag header. The same directive sent as an HTTP header. Invisible in view source, which is why a checker that reads headers matters.
Noindex on the listing page. If the page is not in the index, there is no page for signal to flow from. Directories do this to listing pages more often than they admit.
JavaScript-only links. The link is injected after load. Google may render it eventually; many crawlers never will.
Redirector URLs. https://directory.com/go?id=123 instead of your URL. The link points at the directory, which then redirects. Some pass signal, many are blocked in robots.txt and pass nothing.
Robots.txt blocks the page. A crawler that cannot fetch the page cannot see the link.
What a nofollow link is still worth
Not zero. A nofollow link from a page people read still sends visitors, still puts your name in front of buyers, and still shows up in the link graphs AI search tools draw on. It just will not move rankings.
So the rule is simple: never pay for a link because it is "dofollow" without checking, and never turn down a relevant nofollow mention because of the rel.
Check your own outbound links too
The mirror question: what are you passing to others? Affiliate links without rel="sponsored" are the most common way a small site ends up in a link scheme by accident.
A checklist for every new backlink
- Run the page through a dofollow checker the day the link goes live.
- Confirm the anchor points at your exact domain, not a redirector.
- Confirm the page is indexable: no noindex, no robots nofollow, not blocked in robots.txt.
- Note the anchor text. Descriptive beats "click here".
- Re-check a month later. Links vanish in redesigns more often than anyone admits.