What is NoFollow and DoFollow?

‘Nofollow’ is a HTML attribute attached to hyperlinks in order to ensure that the specific link in question does not pass any value that will help improve the target site’s search engine rank.

It was first created by Google in 2005 as a means to combat keyword spam, particularly on webpages where users can add links by themselves. Other search engines like Yahoo and MSN Live both respect the nofollow attribute as well.

More details from Google’s official blog:

If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it.

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.

This isn’t a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it’s just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

The nofollow attribute is now widely adopted by many blog platforms, online communities and other websites where users are free to submit or put up links on their own.

While human moderation is still used to approve these links, many have the nofollow attribute turned by default in order to deter spam.

Here is an example of nofollow being applied to a link:

• Normal link:
  See the <a href="http://www.example.com/">best credit cards </a>
• Link with Nofollow:
  See the <a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">best credit cards </a>

What Are DoFollow Blogs or Websites?

In its most basic definition, dofollow is just a way of referring to links that do not use the ‘nofollow’ attribute. In other words, these are normal links which pass value and credit towards improving search engine ranks.

The origin of the term ‘dofollow’ appears to stem from a movement by bloggers who believe that comments are legitimate contributions by readers, therefore the wholesale marking of every comment as spam by default through the ‘nofollow’ tag is not fair and justified

As such, these bloggers or other non-blog websites override the existing platform defaults by removing the nofollow attribute, making all the links ‘dofollow’.

These dofollow blogs and websites have consistently been a target of webmasters and spammers who leave keyword links with their choice of anchor text in order to enhance their search rank. You can find dofollow blogs through a simple google search.