“nofollow” Still Considered Harmful

Published on Jan 6, 2007 (updated Jan 23, 2025), filed under development, html (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, 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 a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)