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How to Check If a Backlink Is Dofollow (in 30 Seconds, Without Guessing)

#seo #webdev #beginners #tutorial

Every week, link-building lists promise hundreds of "dofollow" sites. We stopped trusting the lists and started reading the HTML instead. It takes about 30 seconds per page, and it changed which links we bother building.

We publish AI, software and how-to guides at techexample org, so most of our checking happens on tech and blogging sites — but the method works for any page, in any niche.

There is no "dofollow" attribute

A link is dofollow when it is a normal link without any of these values in its rel attribute:

  • nofollow — "do not count this link"
  • ugc — user-generated content (comments, forum posts); Google discounts these
  • sponsored — paid or affiliate link

noopener and noreferrer are browser security hints. They say nothing to search engines, so a link with only those two is dofollow.

The 30-second check

For most sites, one command is enough:

curl -sS -L "https://example.com/the-page" | grep -o '<a [^>]*yourdomain[^>]*>'
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Look at the rel in the tag that comes back. No nofollow, no ugc, no sponsored? The link passes weight.

If the site blocks scripted fetches, open the page in your browser and run this in the console instead:

Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('a[href]'))
  .filter(a => a.href.includes('yourdomain.com'))
  .map(a => (a.getAttribute('rel') || '(empty)') + '  <-  ' + a.href)
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Check the link a user placed, not every link on the page

This is the mistake that gives false positives. A page is full of the platform's own links, which are usually clean. What matters is the exact link a user like you can place:

  • On most WordPress blogs, a comment author's name links to their website — and WordPress core renders it as rel="ugc external nofollow" unless the owner installs a specific plugin to change it. In a recent sweep of well-known tech and blogging sites taken from popular "dofollow blog commenting" lists, every single one rendered comment links that way.
  • On dev.to, links inside an article body carry only noopener noreferrer — dofollow. Links inside comments on the same platform carry nofollow. Same site, opposite answer, depending on where the link sits.
  • Several large publishing platforms wrap author-placed links in a redirect and mark them nofollow, even when the rest of the page looks clean.

So: find a real comment, a real guest post, a real profile — and inspect that link.

What we do differently now

  1. Check before writing. Thirty seconds of checking beats an afternoon of writing for a link that passes nothing.
  2. Prefer a few verified links over a long list. One in-article link on a strong, relevant domain is worth more than fifty comment links on sites nobody reads.
  3. Keep good comments anyway — for the right reason. A thoughtful comment on a relevant blog still brings readers and relationships. It just should not be counted as a dofollow backlink when the HTML says otherwise.
  4. Re-check occasionally. Platforms change their rel policies without announcing it. A link that passed weight last year may not today.

If you want the plain-English version of checks like this, we keep our step-by-step guides collected on the techexample org homepage — Docker, Linux, local AI tools and the other things we test before we write about them.

How do you verify a link before you count it? I am curious which tools other people trust for this.

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