• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Technical SEO
        4. Should we Nofollow Social Links?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Should we Nofollow Social Links?

        Technical SEO
        10
        15
        9186
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • JH_OffLimits
          JH_OffLimits Subscriber last edited by

          I've been asked the question of whether if we should nofollow all of our social links, would this be a wise thing to do?

          I'm not exactly getting a clear answer from search results and thought you guys would be best to ask 🙂

          Thanks in advance.

          seobrighton 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • sarahwalsh
            sarahwalsh last edited by

            Many social media pages link to businesses; for example, on LinkedIn, someone might link to your company's blog post; this is perfectly fine; it can help more people to discover your business's content marketing and products that you sell, so your website gets more shoppers on it.

            We use Facebook to promote our garden office company within Bristol, England to help promote our summerhouses on Facebook, its helped us to sell many more of our products.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • tir17
              tir17 @swifttr last edited by

              @swifttr

              Google doesn't utilize or recommend using the rel="me" attribute, wouldn't ask anyone to try it out.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Domain-Matty
                Domain-Matty @swifttr last edited by

                @swifttr Google does not use "rel me" microformats

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • swifttr
                  swifttr last edited by

                  Instead of using rel="nofollow" you should use rel="me" if you're linking to your own social media pages. This allows you to explicitly tell Google that you're not just linking to those pages, but you actually control them.
                  By placing ‘rel=me’ attributes on all your links to your social media profiles (from your own website), it will help search engines like Google understand and have confidence that your social profiles are actually your brand.
                  Source: [https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/52877/should-i-use-rel-nofollow-for-social-media-links](link url)

                  Domain-Matty tir17 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • ZollB
                    ZollB last edited by

                    I think all social media links should be nofollowed!

                    Do you think that your social media profile will benefit if you link to it with dofollow? No! Who will benefit from it? The social media platforms and your competitors! You and your website won't get any benefit from it, rather them!
                    In Google you will always want your website to be first, not your social media pages.
                    Anyone who want to find your social media pages will find it anyway.
                    You nofollow all external links except social media pages? Why do you give any credit to them? Then people wonder why Facebook rules the internet...

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • tir17
                      tir17 @Domain-Matty last edited by

                      Hey Matty @domain-matty that's a great test but I think in your scenario the social links are in the footer of the site passing the majority of the massive link juice.

                      If the same links are do-follow directly through some blog anchor text and posts from your site, it will have very little to no effect on the external link juice passed from your site to your social page.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Domain-Matty
                        Domain-Matty @tir17 last edited by

                        @tir17 Google is not actually as smart as some may think in this respect. I tested the concept out on my own site. I had social links built into my site template and not as an addon or a plugin. When I did a link audit for the first time I found my site was passing off thousands of dofollow links off to social media sites and I was truly alarmed. I very rarely allow my site to pass off any of my domain authority so over 95% of my external links I had marked as nofollow. I have a DA40 site with some really good niche link pointing at me however, I was perplexed to find in testing if I actually gave a site a keyword targeted link it has very little effect. So I then nofollowed the thousands of external dofollow links my site was passing off to social media. It was then after a about a period of two weeks the sites I tested with keyword tagreted dofollow links actually jumped. An actual sign my link juice was in fact highly diluted.

                        tir17 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • seobrighton
                          White Rabbit @JH_OffLimits last edited by

                          @jh_offlimits as you can see here and from your own research, it's unlikely that you'll get a clear answer to this question. As with many SEO related questions, the answer usually starts with "Well it depends..."

                          It mostly depends on what your reasons are for doing it. Take a look at this article for more info about follow vs nofollow.

                          Another factor that might be worth considering is if the social links are the only external links on a given page or a site. Adding nofollow to them may not be the best idea...

                          "Nofollowed links are also part of a natural link profile and a site with no nofollowed links looks odd." source = https://www.searchenginejournal.com/when-to-use-nofollow-on-links/

                          ...you could always link out to somewhere else with a "dofollow" to balance things out.

                          See this old thread for more thoughts about that.

                          Also think about the anchor text of those links and how/if that may affect things.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Domain-Matty
                            Domain-Matty last edited by

                            Google is smart enough to work these things out. That is a good point. However, remember the more dofollow links your site hands out. The less power each external dofollow link will give.

                            Best to nofollow your all your social links. And save the dofollow links for the sites you choose to pass your link juice to.

                            Lets talk a little bit more about this subject and give an example.

                            Here we have two identical websites with an identical backlink profile

                            Site 1 DA50
                            Site 2 DA50 Sites

                            Site 1 is giving out 1000 dofollow links
                            Site2 is giving out 10 dofollow links

                            If your website was to get a link from either of these sites. You will get more ranking power from site 2 because they are passing off less links.

                            Another example.

                            Site 1 DA50
                            Site 2 DA90

                            Site 1 (DA50) is passing off 50 dofollow links
                            Site 2 (DA90) is passing off 10,000 dofollow links

                            Which site would give you more ranking power?

                            Answer. Site 1 (DA50)

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • tir17
                              tir17 last edited by

                              Hey,

                              I would suggest if you're linking to your own social links to you own accounts or property pages, you do not have to mark them as no-follow. Google is smart enough to figure out your site or brand presence on social media, you can even check the same in the knowledge graph.

                              If you're planning to link to other social accounts or channels outside of your property, for example to an author's social media channel page or account, who is not in your organization, such links should definitely be no-follow.

                              Domain-Matty 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • Domain-Matty
                                Domain-Matty last edited by

                                The problem here is link dilution. The more dofollow links your site gives out. The less powerful your site becomes.

                                So if you have 100 posts on your site with 4 different dofollow social links on each post. Your site is passing off a passive amount of your own authority and diluting the power of the links that you choose pass authority. Also, when your site is giving off heaps of dofollow links. It does not have as much ranking power. Its best to nofollow all social links on your website if you wish to preserve your own domain authority, SERP and link equity

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • jasongmcmahon
                                  jasongmcmahon last edited by

                                  I agree with Andreas explanation of Google rules on using nofollow /

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • josellamazares
                                    josellamazares last edited by

                                    Hi,

                                    In my opinion that is not negative for the SEO of your website because you are linking to sites with more authority than your website. That's positive, besides being able to increase your social traffic, those are positive signals for Google. When you go to link to sites that do not want to transmit your authority or that you just do not see them safe to the user experience you can use the nofollow tag.

                                    I hope it helps

                                    Regards

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • paints-n-design
                                      paints-n-design last edited by

                                      Thats a really good question and I can only tell you my own point of view. Even in SEO-world in done and not done. I just think like this:

                                      According to Google, use nofollow for

                                      • not trustworthy pages you link to
                                      • paid links
                                      • crawl prioritization

                                      So one and two  is not the case (hopefully I can trust your socials). 
                                      To Point three, some webmasters really want to safe "PR" or "DA" with not passing it to pages using nofollow. This is not working, the PR is just send to nirvana. You can't save it, it is divided by links - no matter if the are followed or not. So the only reason in point 3 is - you don't want Search Engines to notfollow and notindex your socials (last is done if you nofollow them or not) - so my Point of View:

                                      I just use nofollow in cases Google says I should (you can btw read it here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en). Socials is not one of these cases, so I use Follow .

                                      Add: Comments and User-Generated-Content is also a good Idea of using nofollow - dont know if Google mentions that on the given Page)

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • 1 / 1
                                      • First post
                                        Last post

                                      Browse Questions

                                      Explore more categories

                                      • Moz Tools

                                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                                      • SEO Tactics

                                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                                      • Community

                                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                                      • Digital Marketing

                                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                                      • Research & Trends

                                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                                      • Support

                                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                                      • See all categories

                                      Related Questions

                                      • sforoughi

                                        disavow link more than 100,000 lines

                                        disavow spam

                                        I recieved a huge amount of spamy link (most of them has spam score 100) Currently my disavow link is arround 85.000 lines but at least i have 100.000 more domain which i should add them. All of them are domains and i don't have any backlink in my file. My Problem is that google dosen't accept disavow link which are more than 2MB and showes this message : File too big: Maximum file size is 100,000 lines and 2MB What should i do now?

                                        Technical SEO | | sforoughi
                                        0
                                      • UnbounceVan

                                        How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?

                                        I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding   Disallow: /clkn/   in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?

                                        Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan
                                        0
                                      • MiguelSalcido

                                        Why are these internal pages not showing any internal links?

                                        If you look at Author profile pages like this one, http://experts.allbusiness.com/author/denise-oberry (THE top contributor on the site with over 82 posts under her belt), or any Author profile page, they show zero internal links or Page Authority. The same goes for most posts for each author on the site. Author pages should show internal links from every post the author has on the site. And specific posts should also have internal links from categories, etc. Yet they show zero. The only posts that show internal links and PA are ones that were either syndicated to the root domain's homepage, or syndicated to Fox Small Business. ZERO internal links. Does anyone know why this is? The root domain does not act this way with Author pages and posts. And I see nothing blocking links or indexing via the robots.txt file or page level nofollow tags. A real head scratcher for this SEO nerd, that I'm sure someone here will have a really simple answer to.

                                        Technical SEO | | MiguelSalcido
                                        0
                                      • mshowells

                                        Fake Links indexing in google

                                        Hello everyone, I have an interesting situation occurring here, and hoping maybe someone here has seen something of this nature or be able to offer some sort of advice. So, we recently installed a wordpress to a subdomain for our business and have been blogging through it. We added the google webmaster tools meta tag and I've noticed an increase in 404 links. I brought this up to or server admin, and he verified that there were a lot of ip's pinging our server looking for these links that don't exist. We've combed through our server files and nothing seems to be compromised. Today, we noticed that when you do site:ourdomain.com into google the subdomain with wordpress shows hundreds of these fake links, that when you visit them, return a 404 page. Just curious if anyone has seen anything like this, what it may be, how we can stop it, could it negatively impact us in anyway? Should we even worry about it? Here's the link to the google results. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amshowells.com&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58.1905j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8 (odd links show up on pages 2-3+)

                                        Technical SEO | | mshowells
                                        0
                                      • inlinear

                                        Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

                                        Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
                                        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
                                        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
                                        RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
                                        2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
                                        Holger

                                        Technical SEO | | inlinear
                                        0
                                      • EwanFisher

                                        International Site Links In Footer

                                        We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?

                                        Technical SEO | | EwanFisher
                                        0
                                      • guycampbell

                                        Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion

                                        Hi, We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections. To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections. Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections. This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line. So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed. One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Regards, Guy

                                        Technical SEO | | guycampbell
                                        1
                                      • pauledwards

                                        Link Volume - calculate what you need?

                                        Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?

                                        Technical SEO | | pauledwards
                                        0

                                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                      Start my free trial
                                      Products
                                      • Moz Pro
                                      • Moz Local
                                      • Moz API
                                      • Moz Data
                                      • STAT
                                      • Product Updates
                                      Moz Solutions
                                      • SMB Solutions
                                      • Agency Solutions
                                      • Enterprise Solutions
                                      • Digital Marketers
                                      Free SEO Tools
                                      • Domain Authority Checker
                                      • Link Explorer
                                      • Keyword Explorer
                                      • Competitive Research
                                      • Brand Authority Checker
                                      • Local Citation Checker
                                      • MozBar Extension
                                      • MozCast
                                      Resources
                                      • Blog
                                      • SEO Learning Center
                                      • Help Hub
                                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                      • How-to Guides
                                      • Moz Academy
                                      • API Docs
                                      About Moz
                                      • About
                                      • Team
                                      • Careers
                                      • Contact
                                      Why Moz
                                      • Case Studies
                                      • Testimonials
                                      Get Involved
                                      • Become an Affiliate
                                      • MozCon
                                      • Webinars
                                      • Practical Marketer Series
                                      • MozPod
                                      Connect with us

                                      Contact the Help team

                                      Join our newsletter
                                      Moz logo
                                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                      • Accessibility
                                      • Terms of Use
                                      • Privacy

                                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.