Non-Supported Rel Link Attributes Do Nothing In Google Search

Mar 24, 2023 - 7:11 am 8 by

Google Robot By Door 640

The other day, John Mueller of Google tweeted something true but sarcastic and it seems some took it the wrong way. He said In case you're curious, the rel=dofollow works on links. The thing is, it could have been any rel attribute, such as rel=cheese and it would be treated the same as rel=dofollow, Google would ignore the attribute.

The only attributes Google would recognize and do anything with are the supported link attributes, such as rel=nofollow, rel=sponsored, and rel=ugc. But rel=dofollow means nothing to Google, Google will just crawl it like the rel link attribute is not even there. Occasionally I stick funny things in my link attributes just to see if anyone would pick up on it, no one does.

After John tweet this, he had to then come back and clarify, as to not set some SEOs off to add dofollow to their HTML links.

Here are those tweets:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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