“nofollow” Still Considered Harmful

Published on Jan 6, 2007 (updated Jan 23, 2025), filed under development, html. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

This and 133 other posts are also available as a well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.

nofollow is crap.

The “No nofollow” website’s explanation of all the disadvantages of the unstandardized nofollow value for HTML’s rel attribute is pretty comprehensive. Please read it, if you haven’t before, especially when you run a system that hammers out nofollow rel attributes.

Put simply, nofollow disrespects the nature of the Web and it disrespects users. If anyone, it only benefits search engines. We need to think about other ways to avoid spam. We need to stop using nofollow.

Ultimately, the entire nofollow thing reminds of camera surveillance. Everyone appears to think it helps against crime and terrorism, but it doesn’t.

Update (January 23, 2025)

It took 18 years to allow two exceptions for me never to use rel=nofollow: One as a safety around the 13,000 and counting links on Frontend Dogma, the other to handle links to the right-wing platform Twitter/X that could not yet be replaced (as with a link to archive.org) or removed.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, keep it friendly, but do be critical.)