A dofollow link is the informal name for a normal HTML link that carries no rel value asking search engines to discount it. There is no rel="dofollow" attribute in HTML or in any search engine's documentation. The term exists only as the opposite of nofollow, and it usually refers to links that can pass ranking credit.
There is no dofollow attribute
A link is followed by default. Writing rel="dofollow" does nothing, because search engines ignore rel values they do not recognize. When people say a site gives dofollow links, they mean its links are not marked with nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
<!-- These two links are treated the same -->
<a href="https://example.com/">plain link</a>
<a href="https://example.com/" rel="dofollow">plain link</a>Why the term causes trouble
Link sellers advertise "dofollow backlinks" because a followed link is what passes ranking credit. That pitch is itself the problem: a link sold for money must be qualified under Google's spam policies, so a paid dofollow link is a policy violation by definition.
Within honest link building, the term is harmless shorthand. It just helps to remember that followed or not is one property of a link, and not the most important one. Relevance, the page's audience and whether real readers will click matter as much.
Checking whether a link is followed
View the page source or inspect the element and look for a rel value on the anchor tag. Most backlink tools also label links as followed or nofollow. Remember that a link can also be blocked from crawling in other ways, such as a robots.txt rule on the linking page or a JavaScript link that crawlers cannot see.
Example
A pitch to ignore
A founder at an illustrative invoicing startup, Ledgerbloom, receives an email offering "guaranteed dofollow links on high-authority sites" for a flat fee per link. Because the offer exchanges money for followed links, it falls under Google's description of link schemes. The team declines and puts the budget into a data study it can pitch to journalists instead.
Common mistakes
Adding rel="dofollow" to links
It has no effect. Remove it to keep markup clean.
Only valuing followed links
Qualified links from communities, social platforms and big publishers can bring buyers and further coverage that does pass credit.
Questions
For ranking credit, a followed link is generally assumed to carry more. For traffic and visibility, it depends entirely on where the link sits and who reads it.
Asking an editor to link to a genuinely useful resource is normal. Asking for a followed link in exchange for payment or other compensation breaks Google's policies.
