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Noindex and nofollow are two instructions you use to tell a search engine how to treat your content. Noindex means do not add this page to the index, so it does not appear in the results. Nofollow means do not follow this link and do not pass any strength through it. They sound similar and are often confused, but each one deals with something completely different. One concerns a whole page and whether it shows up in search, the other concerns a single link and what flows through it. Understanding the difference is a fundamental part of technical SEO and protects you from mistakes that can seriously damage a website.
Where the word comes from
Both words simply combine the English “no” with another term. Noindex just means do not index, do not add to the search engine’s register. Nofollow means do not follow, so do not go any further along the link. The word “follow” is the same one behind crawling a website, where a bot follows links from one page to another. For a specific link, nofollow tells it “not this way”. These are instructions written directly in the code that you use to control the bot’s behaviour.
A brief history of noindex and nofollow
Google introduced the nofollow attribute in 2005 so that websites could fight spam in comments and discussions. By marking a link as nofollow, they signalled that they did not vouch for it and were not passing it any trust.
In 2019, Google refined the system and added the sponsored value for paid links and ugc for user-generated content. Nofollow thus turned from a strict command into more of a hint. Noindex has always worked differently. It is an indexing instruction that Google respects strictly.
How noindex and nofollow work from an SEO perspective
Noindex is added as a meta tag in the page header and is the most reliable way to keep a page out of the results. It is useful for thank-you pages, filtered listings or internal search, which have no place in a search engine. Watch out for a common misconception. Blocking a page in the robots.txt file is not the same thing, as that controls crawling, not indexing.
Noindex is often used on client area pages or during a redesign, when the website is running on a test domain. This is also where a common mistake happens: developers launch the website live but do not remove the noindex from it (or from parts of it). If nobody acts quickly, the consequences are fatal.
Nofollow is added as an attribute directly in the link. It is used for paid and untrustworthy links, or wherever you do not want to pass on authority. It is closely related to anchor text and to how you build a healthy backlink profile.
Why noindex and nofollow matter
A misused noindex is one of the fastest ways to knock your website out of Google. All it takes is leaving it by mistake on an important page or, worse, on the whole website after moving from the test version, and your traffic disappears overnight.
Checking these instructions is therefore an absolute basic of every SEO audit. With nofollow, in turn, you decide where link strength flows across your website, which is essential for well-planned link building as well as internal linking.
Where it leads further
Noindex and nofollow are really about the art of saying no. About consciously deciding what to show the world and what to leave aside, and what to lend your trust to and what not. A website is not about making everything public and recommending everything. It is about curation, about choosing. Just as in life, your recommendations only have value when you do not hand them out to anyone. Every link you follow is a small vote of trust, and that is exactly why it makes sense to consciously tone some of them down, so the others carry more weight in the world of SEO as a whole.
The most common mistakes
- Confusing noindex with blocking in robots.txt. The bot will not crawl a blocked page, so it never even sees the noindex.
- A forgotten noindex across the whole website after launching from the test version, which wipes out all indexing.
- Blanket nofollow on all outbound links out of fear, which takes away the website’s chance to build a natural profile.
- Noindex on a page that you also block from crawling, so the instruction never gets a chance to work.
Questions about noindex and nofollow
What is the difference between noindex and nofollow?
Noindex concerns a whole page and says it should not appear in the results. Nofollow concerns a single link and says no link strength should be passed through it.
Is noindex the same as robots.txt?
No. Robots.txt controls whether the bot crawls the page at all, noindex controls whether it adds the page to the index. If you block a page in robots.txt, the bot will never even find the noindex.
When should you use nofollow?
For paid links, untrustworthy sources and user-generated content. Google also has the sponsored and ugc values for this.
