Most advice on nofollow links is a lightly edited version of Google’s 2019 announcement.

That announcement changed something important, but it did not settle every argument. Google moved nofollow away from being an absolute directive and began treating it as a hint. The practical consequence is easy to miss: nobody outside Google can verify whether a particular nofollow link influenced ranking, crawling or discovery in a specific case.

An article that says nofollow definitely passes ranking value, or definitely never contributes anything, claims more certainty than the evidence allows.

So the useful question around nofollow link value in 2026 is not simply, “Does this link pass equity?”

It is:

What is this placement worth if its ranking value is zero?

That is a much better question for an SEO manager deciding where to spend budget.

This guide uses Google’s documentation, the history of the attribute and practical tests you can run against your own backlink profile to answer it. If you need the basic mechanics first, our guide to dofollow vs nofollow backlinks covers the distinction.

One disclosure before we begin: Infinity Rank sells link-building services, including campaigns where publishers may place followed editorial links. We do not treat compensated links as exempt from Google’s rules. Any paid or sponsored relationship should be qualified in line with Google’s link-spam policies.

The short answer

Do nofollow links help SEO? Yes, but you should not budget for them as measurable ranking equity.

Google says links marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc are generally treated differently from ordinary editorial links, and the attributes function as hints rather than absolute commands.

That still leaves several useful jobs for a nofollow link.

It can send qualified visitors.

It can expose your brand to journalists, creators and potential customers.

It can put your name on platforms that later appear in search results or AI-generated answers.

And it can correctly qualify paid or user-generated links so they do not create unnecessary spam-policy risk.

What nofollow links do not do is give you a dependable unit of ranking value you can plug into a forecast.

In a September 2026 survey reported by PPC Land, 131 SEO practitioners ranked backlinks second among 103 factors they believed mattered for Google rankings. That is evidence of practitioner opinion, not a measurement of Google’s algorithm, but it is consistent with the long-standing importance of backlinks in competitive search markets.