What the rel values mean
- Followed (“dofollow”). No qualifier. Search engines can follow the link and it can pass ranking credit to the page it points to.
- nofollow. “Don’t associate me with this page.” Used for links you don’t vouch for.
- ugc. User-generated content: comments, forum posts, profile links.
- sponsored. Paid placements, affiliate links and anything else you were paid or given something for. Google’s spam policies expect paid links to carry sponsored or nofollow.
A link can carry more than one, like rel="ugc nofollow". We show every qualifier present, and count a link as followed only when it has none of the three.
How this checker works
We fetch the page’s HTML once (no JavaScript), resolve every <a href> against the page URL and any <base> tag, and read its rel tokens. Outbound links are grouped by domain so you can see, for example, that a directory links to 40 listings but only 3 are followed. Links inside scripts and templates are ignored. The CSV has every link with its anchor text and rel.
Common uses
- Checking a backlink you earned. Open the page that links to you and filter by “Followed”. If the page is also indexable and isn’t blocked in robots.txt, the link can count.
- Vetting a directory or launch site before you submit. Look at how existing listings are linked. Many launch platforms add nofollow, or only follow links for paid listings or for sites that show their badge.
- Auditing your own outbound links. Affiliate and sponsored links without a qualifier are a risk under Google’s link spam policy.
To see whether the linking site has any authority to pass on, check it with the Domain Rating checker. For broken outbound links, use the broken link checker.