Dofollow vs nofollow: what a directory link actually passes

Most directories will tell you whether their links are dofollow or nofollow, and almost none will tell you what that means for you. Here is what directory links actually pass, what they do not, and how to check any directory yourself in about ten seconds.

Full disclosure before anything else: outclimbed, the site you are reading this on, is a paid product directory. That makes us a poor source for a neutral opinion and a good one for an accurate description, because these are decisions we have had to make and live with. Everything below is checkable, and the primary source is linked where there is one.

What "following" a link means

When a search engine crawls a page and finds a link, it can do two separate things: discover the page at the other end, and pass along some measure of endorsement to it. The second one is what people mean by link equity, link juice, or authority. It is the reason an industry exists around acquiring links at all.

By default, a plain anchor tag does both. There is no attribute that turns following on. This matters more than it sounds, because it means dofollow is not a thing. It is a word the SEO industry invented for the absence of an attribute. What exists is a set of attributes that turn following off.

What nofollow actually does

rel="nofollow" was introduced in 2005 to fight comment spam. It tells a search engine that the site publishing the link does not vouch for the destination. For fifteen years it was treated as a strict instruction. Since 2020 Google has treated it as a hint, meaning it reserves the right to use the link for discovery while still not passing an endorsement.

The practical effect for directory links has not changed. A nofollow link is not going to move your rankings the way an unprompted mention in an article would. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

ugc and sponsored, the two most people ignore

In 2019 Google added two more values, and they are the ones that actually describe what a directory is doing. Google's own documentation on qualifying outbound links puts it plainly.

Two things in that documentation are worth quoting directly. On paid placement: "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value", with a note that sponsored is now preferred over nofollow for this. And on all three together: "Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed."

That second sentence is the one that settles most arguments. The three attributes are not a ladder from bad to good. As far as passing an endorsement goes, they land in the same place.

Do directory links do anything, then?

Yes, but not the thing they are usually sold as. A directory link can bring you people. If somebody reads a listing, clicks it and signs up, the rel attribute on that anchor was irrelevant to every part of what just happened. Traffic does not care about link equity.

This is the part worth internalising. The question to ask a directory is not are your links dofollow. It is how many people will click mine. The first question has an answer that sounds impressive and is usually worth little. The second has an answer most directories cannot give you, which is itself informative. The same applies to the AI tool directories that sell backlinks as part of a paid listing.

There is a second thing directory links do that nobody sells, because it cannot be priced: they make your product findable by name. Somebody hears about you in a podcast, half remembers the name, and searches it. A handful of directory links means something recognisable comes back rather than nothing. That is not link equity and it will never show up in a backlink tool as a win, but it is real and it is cumulative.

When a paid dofollow upgrade is worth it

There are real cases. In rough order of how often they apply:

• The directory has genuine editorial standing and is not primarily a list of paid links. A followed link from a page a human curated is a different object from one on a page that accepts anyone with a card.
• You want the referral traffic and the link is incidental. Then you are buying the audience and the attribute is a rounding error either way.
• The listing itself ranks for something. A category page that sits on page one for your category sends people whether or not it passes anything.

When it is not

• The directory sells followed links to everyone who pays. A page of paid followed links is a link scheme under Google's guidelines, and the risk of that sits with the directory, which means the value of the link is unstable in a way you cannot see.
• You are buying at volume. Fifty cheap directory links is a pattern, and patterns are what automated systems are built to find.
• It is your only plan. A link that has to work for you to grow is a plan with one point of failure, owned by somebody else.

It is worth saying why this advice runs against so much of what is written about directory links. The industry that grew up around them sells a countable thing. A report showing forty new directory links is easy to produce and easy to invoice against; a report showing that eleven people arrived and two signed up is harder to get and less flattering. The incentive points at the metric that is easier to move, not the one that matters.

How to check a directory in ten seconds

You do not have to take anybody's word for this, including mine. Open any listing on the directory, view the page source, find the outbound link, and read its rel attribute. That is the whole method.

Three things to notice while you are in there:

• Does the link go to the site at all? Many directories route outbound clicks through a tracking redirect. That is fine and normal, but a redirect passes nothing, so a directory advertising followed links while routing through one is selling you a thing it is not delivering.
• Is the listing page indexable? A followed link on a page carrying noindex is worth exactly nothing.
• Is paid placement disclosed anywhere? A directory that takes money and says so is one whose other claims are more likely to be true.

Where paid links sit in Google's guidelines

Buying or selling links that pass ranking signals is listed in Google's spam policies as a link scheme. The intended remedy is not secrecy, it is disclosure: mark the link so it does not pass a signal, and nobody has done anything wrong. That is precisely what the sponsored value is for.

The consequence people miss is that the penalty for an undisclosed paid link generally lands hardest on the site selling it, not the one buying. If a directory you paid gets discounted, your link stops being worth anything and nobody sends you a refund.

What this site does

Since this article is hosted by a paid directory, here is our own arrangement rather than a description of somebody else's. A place on the wall starts at $10. Every listing is marked as user-submitted, because that is what it is, and directory links here carry ugc and nofollow by default. Outbound clicks route through a counter, so the number next to a listing is people who actually went, not impressions.

What we sell is position and the traffic that comes with it, which is the thing this whole article argues you should be buying. The full link policy, including the parts that are unflattering, is in the rules, and it is written to be read before paying rather than after.

Questions people actually ask

Is there a dofollow attribute? No. A link is followed unless an attribute says otherwise. Dofollow describes an absence.

Do nofollow directory links help SEO? Not through link equity. They can send you visitors, which is a different and more reliable thing to buy.

Does ugc hurt my link? It does not hurt anything. It describes the link accurately. A submitted listing is user-generated content and labelling it as such is what the attribute is for.

Should a paid listing be marked sponsored? By Google's current guidance, yes. And links with any of the three attributes are generally not followed, so a directory selling followed placement is making a choice that carries its own risk.

How do I check? View source on a listing page and read the rel attribute. Ten seconds, no tools, no trust required.

If you want the money side of this rather than the technical side, what a startup directory listing actually costs covers what the various options charge and what you get for it.