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
      • SEO Q&A
      • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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
    • 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
    9175
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    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

                                  Got a burning SEO question?

                                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                  Start my free trial


                                  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
                                  • shawnbeaird

                                    301 Redirect for multiple links

                                    I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old 
                                    domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
                                    domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
                                    domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New 
                                    domain.com/urban 
                                    domain.com/urban/tempe 
                                    domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale

                                    Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
                                    0
                                  • O2C

                                    Self Referencing Links - Good or Bad?

                                    As an agency we get quite a few of our clients come to us saying "Ooo, this company just contacted me saying they've run an SEO report on my site and we need to improve on these following things" We had one come through the other day that had reported on something we had not seen in any others before. They called them self-referencing links and marked it as a point of action should be taken. They had stated that 100% of the pages on our clients website had self-referencing links. The definition of self-referencing is when there is a link on a page that is linking to the page you are currently on. So for example you're on the home page and there is a link in the nav bar at the top that says "Home" with a link to the home page, the page you are already currently on. Is it bad practice? And if so can we do anything about it as it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation. I have not heard anything about this before but I wanted to get confirmation before going back to our client and explaining. Thanks Mozzers!

                                    Technical SEO | | O2C
                                    0
                                  • Twist360

                                    Should we nofollow footer social links?

                                    Like most sites today we have a whole raft of social links in our footer, these are on every page of the site and link out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc Should these links be nofollow to avoid juice leaving our site or would you recommend allowing them to be followed to increase the power of these social sites? Is there a definitive Yay or Na on these social links?

                                    Technical SEO | | Twist360
                                    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
                                  • IPROdigital

                                    Self-referencing links

                                    I personally think that self-referencing links are silly. It's blatantly easy for Google to tell and my instinct says that the link juice for this would simply evaporate rather than passing back to itself. Does anyone have information backing me up from an authoritative source? I can't find any info about this linked to Matt Cutts, Rand or any of those I look up to.

                                    Technical SEO | | IPROdigital
                                    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
                                  • Motava

                                    Secondary Menu - nofollow or other strategy?

                                    We have a "secondary main menu" on a site that displays some popular pages of the site. They are in the main navigation of the site as subpages but we wanted to highlight them on every page of the site through this secondary menu. so this secondary menu is the same on every page of the site. So we have the main menu on the top of the site, subpages on the left and this secondary menu below the subpages (in a blue box so they stand out). Is this secondary menu confusing for the structure of the site or negative at all (in relation to robots, not UX)? Should we nofollow these links in the secondary menu? thanks for replies!

                                    Technical SEO | | Motava
                                    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
                                  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.