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Backlink Types: What Each One Is and What It Does

Pressmerit team7 min read
A ruled plate divided into four shaded registers, one per rel state, each as tall as the number of the ten backlink names that land in it: seven marks fill the register at the top, one sits alone in a thin register drawn in vermilion, two sit in a shorter one, and the last register is the size of the one-mark register but is left dashed and empty.

The same link can be described four different ways by four different people, and only one of those descriptions is written anywhere a search engine can read it. Everything else is vocabulary we use among ourselves.

Most lists of the types of backlinks are lists of the first kind. This page separates them: the names, which describe how a link was obtained, and the rel attribute, which is the part that is actually in the HTML.

The only distinction search engines act on#

There are four states a link can be in, and three of them are set by one attribute.

Diagram of four framed panels, one per rel state, each holding the names of backlinks that land in it. The wide top panel, no rel value, the default and not an attribute, holds seven names: editorial mention, guest post, resource page, directory listing, press release, profile link and footer or site-wide. Below it, three narrower panels side by side: rel sponsored, for advertisements and paid placements, holding paid placement; rel ugc, for comments and forum posts, holding blog comment and forum post; and rel nofollow, for when no other value applies, drawn dashed and holding not one of the ten. A footnote says the names describe how a link was obtained and only the value at the top of each panel is in the HTML.
Seven of the ten names land in the same plain state, and not one lands in nofollow. Only the value at the top of each panel exists in the HTML.

Google's own guidance covers all of them on one page, and it is worth reading rather than reading about (Qualify your outbound links to Google).

rel="sponsored"#

Google's instruction: "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value."

This is the sponsored link attribute, introduced alongside ugc in 2019 to replace the blanket use of nofollow. Google notes that nofollow "was previously recommended for these types of links and is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred." If you run affiliate links, paid reviews or advertising, this is the value for them.

rel="ugc"#

Google's instruction: "We recommend marking user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value."

There is a nuance most explanations drop. Google adds that "if you want to recognize and reward trustworthy contributors, you might remove this attribute from links posted by members or users who have consistently made high-quality contributions over time." So ugc is not a permanent property of the comment section. It is a default you are allowed to lift for people who have earned it.

rel="nofollow"#

Google's instruction: "Use the nofollow value when other values don't apply, and you'd rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site."

Read that ordering carefully, because it inverts what most people assume. nofollow is not the general-purpose marker with sponsored and ugc as special cases. It is the leftover, for links that are neither advertising nor user-generated and that you still do not want to endorse.

Here is the sentence that almost every glossary gets wrong. Google says: "Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed. Remember that the linked pages may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other sites, and thus they may still be crawled."

Generally not followed is not the same as ignored, and not followed is not the same as not crawled. A page you nofollow can still be found, crawled and indexed by another route entirely.

Nothing. There is no rel="dofollow", there never was, and you will not find it in Google's documentation. A "dofollow" link is a link with none of the three values above, which is the default state of every <a href> ever written.

The word survives because we needed something to call the opposite of nofollow. It is a useful piece of shorthand and a bad piece of technical vocabulary, and it is worth knowing which of those two it is when you read a report that counts them.

You can also combine values. Google: "You may specify multiple rel values as a space- or comma-separated list." So rel="ugc nofollow" is valid and means both things.

These names describe position on the page, not anything in the markup. They matter because position is a reasonable proxy for whether a human put the link there deliberately.

Where it sitsDo you control it
Inside the body of an articleNo. The publisher decides
In an author bioPartly. You often write the bio
In a comment or forum postYou place it; the platform sets the attribute
In a footer or site-wide elementNo, and repeated across every page
In a directory or profile listingYou place it
In an advertisement or paid placementYou agree it; the publisher marks it

Only two of those six carry an attribute of their own. A comment or forum link is normally marked ugc, by the platform rather than by you, and an advertisement or paid placement is marked sponsored. The other four carry nothing at all, because nothing in Google's documentation assigns an attribute to a body link, an author bio, a footer or a directory listing. That is the part worth taking from the list: most of the names we use have no counterpart in the HTML.

This is the categorisation Google's own policies care about, and it is the one with consequences. The spam policies for Google web search have a section headed link spam, and these are its examples in Google's words rather than ours:

"Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links"

"Exchanging goods or services for links"

"Excessive link exchanges ('Link to me and I'll link to you') or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking"

"Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass ranking credit, or links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites"

The same section also lists automated link creation, requiring links in contracts, low-quality directory links, keyword-rich hidden links in widgets and forum comment spam. And it states that buying and selling links for legitimate advertising purposes is acceptable when those links carry rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".

Read that list next to the previous section and the pattern is clear. Google's policies are indifferent to what a link is called and interested in how it was obtained and whether that was disclosed. The same guest post is fine or not depending on whether money changed hands and whether the resulting link carries an attribute saying so.

Which is why the honest way to describe a link is not "dofollow from DR 60". It is whether an editor read something, decided it was worth referencing, and linked to it.

Your backlink profile is every link pointing at your site, taken together, described by a handful of properties: which domains link to you and how many distinct ones there are, what the anchor text says, where on the page the links sit, what rel values they carry, and which of them are still live.

The distinct-domains count matters more than the link count. Fifty links from one site is one relationship; fifty links from fifty sites is fifty. Most tools report both and it is easy to read the wrong one.

There is no published ratio you are supposed to hit, and any specific target you are given was invented. What you can check without inventing anything: whether the count of distinct linking domains is going up, whether the anchors read like something a person would write, and whether the links are still there.

What happens to these over time#

The last property in that list is the one nobody tracks, and it changes more than the others.

Ahrefs studied 2,062,173 websites and the links pointing at them since January 2013. At least 66.5% of those links had rotted, and counting temporary crawl errors and other issues, the total they treat as lost reaches 74.5% (Ahrefs link rot study, February 2024). We wrote about that and the rest of the numbers in link building statistics.

The subtler version of the same problem is the one this article is really about: a link does not have to disappear to change. Somebody edits the page, a plugin default changes, an editor applies a new sponsorship policy, and a plain link quietly becomes rel="nofollow". It still resolves, a reader still sees it, and nothing tells you. That is why the attribute is worth re-checking on a schedule rather than at the moment of publication, and why what gets agreed before publication is worth writing down.

Sources#

Both checked 15 August 2026.

Questions, answered plainly

What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow?

A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" in its HTML. A dofollow link carries nothing: "dofollow" is not a real attribute and never has been, it is just the name people gave to the absence of the others. Google says links marked with these attributes "will generally not be followed", and adds that the linked pages may still be found and crawled through sitemaps or links from other sites. So the practical difference is whether you have told Google not to associate your site with the destination, not whether the page can be discovered.

What are the main types of backlinks?

Two different questions get the same answer in most lists, which is where the confusion starts. Sorted by where the link sits, you get body links, author bio links, comment and forum links, footer and site-wide links, directory and profile listings, and advertisements. Sorted by how the link came about, the categories stop being descriptive and start carrying consequences, because that is the cut Google policy actually makes. Worth knowing before you memorise any of it: almost none of those names exist in the HTML. Google defines three rel values, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, and its documentation assigns none of them to a footer link or a directory listing. The names describe position and intent, not something a search engine reads off the page.

What is a healthy backlink profile?

There is no published ratio to hit, and anyone quoting you one has made it up. A backlink profile is simply every link pointing at your site, described by who links, how many distinct domains they represent, what the links say, where they sit on the page and what rel values they carry. What makes it healthy is that it plausibly reflects how people actually reference you, and the useful checks are directional: is the count of distinct linking domains growing, do the anchors read like sentences rather than keyword strings, and are the links still live.

Are sponsored links against Google guidelines?

No, when they are marked. Google says to mark advertisements and paid placements with rel="sponsored", and its spam policies state that buying and selling links for legitimate advertising purposes is acceptable when the links carry rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". What the same policies list as link spam is the unmarked version: exchanging money for links that pass ranking credit, and advertorials where payment is received for articles containing such links. The attribute is the difference between an advertisement and a policy violation.

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