Which of these links actually pass signal?
Plenty of directories advertise backlinks and then ship them with rel="nofollow". You can’t tell from the page. Paste a URL and see every outbound link with its real rel — including the one pointing at you.
What the rel values mean
- (none)
- Passes ranking signal. This is what people mean by dofollow — there is no rel="dofollow" attribute; the absence of a suppressing value is the signal.
- nofollow
- Tells search engines not to pass signal. Originally for untrusted links.
- sponsored
- Paid or compensated placement. The correct marking for an ad, and it passes nothing.
- ugc
- User-generated — comments, forum posts. Passes nothing.
Where followed links actually come from
How to earn dofollow backlinks as a new product covers what happened when we tried to verify 51 startup directories rather than copying a listicle — 22 confirmed, 27 unverifiable — and the places a product with no audience can realistically earn links.
For what it’s worth, you can point this at our own listings — the “Visit” link on a live listing carries no suppressing rel, and a paid sidebar placement carries sponsored, which is what it should be. Checking is the point of the tool.