Nofollow is not a replacement for Noindex

Google’s search advocate, John Mueller, recommends that the nofollow link attribute is not a substitute for the noindex directive.

Googlebot is able to find and index unfollowed links. Therefore, it should not be used in hopes of excluding a page from Google’s search index.

The topic was discussed in a Google Search Central SEO office hour hangout recorded on January 7.

Mueller fixed a submitted question asking if rel=”nofollow” could be used as noindex.

The person who submitted the question noted that they were not following internal links to pages they did not want indexed in search results.

While doing so won’t cause any problems, adding the nofollow attribute to internal links will not prevent the page from being indexed in search results.

See more from Mueller on this topic in the section below.

Nofollow is not equal to Noindex

When asked if rel=”nofollow” could be used to exclude pages from Google’s search index, Mueller said:

“No. Essentially, nofollow tells us not to pass any PageRank to these pages, but that doesn’t mean we will never index that page. So if you really want to prevent a page from being indexed, please Make sure it has a noindex on it.

Don’t expect us to not accidentally run random links to this page. So I wouldn’t assume the two are the same. “

Mueller goes on to cite an article by Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes that explains the difference between nofollow and other types of link attributes.

In the article, Illyes explains how nofollow is considered hint rather than instructions.

This means that it cannot always be relied upon to accomplish what it was designed for.

Nofollow tells Google that the site doesn’t want to pass PageRank from one URL to another, but Google may decide to do so.

In this case, Google sometimes uses it as a link discovery signal.

Mueller continued:

“Especially regarding new content on the web, I think Gary wrote a blog post about a year ago about rel=”nofollow” and different types of other rel attributes, and he mentioned that we sometimes use this also for Discover URLs.

So on the one hand we might see links without nofollow. We might see it through nofollow, but we’ll still see it anyway. If you do not want a page to be indexed, then make sure it is not indexed. “

Unlike nofollow, which is a hint, the noindex attribute is a directive.

This means that Google will honor the site’s request and not index specific pages.

This is one way to keep pages off Google search results.

Hear Mueller’s full response in the video below:

Featured image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, January 2022.