Dofollow or Nofollow Backlink Checker
You submitted your startup somewhere and got listed. Is that backlink actually dofollow — and is the page it sits on even indexable? Paste the page and your domain to check any backlink in a couple of seconds.
What this tool actually checks
Most free backlink tools answer the question “how many links do I have?”. That is rarely the question a founder has. After submitting to a directory, a newsletter, or a roundup post, the question is narrower and much more useful: is this specific link worth anything? Three things decide that, and this checker looks at all three on the page you give it.
First, the rel attribute. A link with no rel restriction is a dofollow link and can pass ranking signals. A link carrying nofollow, ugc, or sponsored is flagged for search engines as something not to count in the usual way. The tool shows the raw rel value next to a plain-English verdict, plus the anchor text, because anchor text is half of what a link communicates.
Second, whether the hosting page is noindex. This is the check almost nobody runs, and it is the one that quietly wastes the most effort. A page can carry a perfectly clean dofollow link and still be worthless to you because the page itself is excluded from the index by a robots meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag response header. A link on a page that is never indexed passes nothing to anyone.
Third, whether the page is blocked in that host’s robots.txt. If crawlers are told not to fetch the URL, they never see the link on it in the first place. Between them, those two checks separate a real backlink from a listing that looks live but is invisible to search engines.
And if there is no link to your domain at all, the tool says so plainly. That is a genuine answer — a lot of directories accept a submission, show you a confirmation, and never actually publish a link.
What do dofollow, nofollow, ugc and sponsored actually mean?
One of them passes ranking signals and three of them are hints that Google will “generally not” follow the link. Those are Google’s own words, and the vagueness is deliberate: since March 2020 these attributes have been hints rather than directives, so the honest planning assumption is that none of the three count. Values can also be combined — Google’s own example is rel="ugc nofollow" — as a space- or comma-separated list.
| rel value | Google’s stated use | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| no rel attribute | The default. Nothing tells Google to discount the link. | A dofollow link. This is the one that counts toward link-based authority. |
| rel="nofollow" | Use it when the other values do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl, the linked page. | Treat as passing nothing. Still worth having for referral traffic and visibility. |
| rel="ugc" | Recommended for user-generated content links such as comments and forum posts. | What most comment sections, profile links and open submission forms emit. |
| rel="sponsored" | For links that are advertisements or paid placements. | The correct marking for a paid link. Its presence is a sign the site is playing straight. |
| rel="noopener" / "noreferrer" | Not link-qualification attributes at all. | Security and privacy flags. They have no effect on whether a link passes ranking signals. |
How does this compare to Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz backlink checkers?
They answer a different question. The free checkers from Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz are index lookups: they tell you which backlinks their crawler has already found for your domain, which is a portfolio view and is capped on the free tiers. This tool is a live fetch of one page you name, so it answers “is the link I earned yesterday real, and is it worth anything?” — a question an index cannot answer until it re-crawls.
The practical differences: an index-based checker will not show a link published an hour ago, and it will still show one that was removed last week. It reports the rel attribute it recorded at crawl time rather than what the page serves now. And none of the three free tiers tell you whether the hosting page is indexable, which is the check that decides whether a perfect-looking dofollow link is worth anything at all. Use those tools for the overall picture and this one to verify a specific placement.
How to read the result
A dofollow link on an indexable, crawlable page is the outcome you want: it is a real editorial vote. A nofollow link on a high-traffic page is still worth having — it sends referral visitors, and being mentioned somewhere credible has value beyond SEO — it just should not be counted as link equity in your plan. A dofollow link on a noindex page is the case to walk away from: it costs you the same effort as a good link and returns nothing. And the rel attribute says nothing about how much authority the linking site actually has to pass — a dofollow link from a weak domain moves the needle far less than one from a strong one, so it is worth checking the linking domain’s Domain Rating too. For the full background on how these attributes work and which ones are worth chasing, read our guide to dofollow vs nofollow backlinks for startups.
Where to get links worth checking
Once you can tell a good link from a decorative one, the next problem is finding places that give out the good kind. Start with our list of the best startup directories and the free directories worth submitting to, then work through how to get backlinks for a new website. Run each one through this checker after you are listed — you will find that a surprising number of “dofollow directories” are not.
Launchory is on the other side of that line by design. Submit your startup, embed the badge from our badge generator on your own site, and your listing gets a dofollow link on an indexable page — then point this tool at it and confirm for yourself. You can also browse the directory or see the rest of our free founder tools.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check if a backlink is dofollow or nofollow?
Paste the page that should be linking to you plus your own domain. The tool fetches that page, finds every link pointing at your domain, and reports the rel attribute on each one — dofollow, nofollow, ugc, or sponsored — along with the anchor text used.
What is the difference between dofollow, nofollow, ugc, and sponsored?
A link with no rel restriction is a dofollow link and can pass ranking signals. rel="nofollow" tells search engines not to pass them. rel="ugc" marks user-generated content such as comments and forum posts, and rel="sponsored" marks paid or affiliate placements. Google treats all three as hints, and in practice none of them are counted the way a plain dofollow link is.
Why does the tool tell me whether the page is noindex?
Because a dofollow link on a page that search engines never keep in their index passes nothing. Plenty of directories publish listings on pages that carry a noindex meta tag or are blocked in robots.txt — the link looks perfect in the HTML and is worth nothing. This is the check most backlink tools skip.
Why does it say no link was found when I can see one on the page?
The checker reads the raw HTML a crawler sees. If the link is injected by JavaScript after the page loads, sits behind a redirect or a link-shortening script, or lives on a different URL than the one you pasted, it will not appear here — and search engines often will not count it either.
Is this tool free?
Yes. There is no sign-up, no account, and no limit beyond a short rate limit to keep the outbound fetching polite. It runs on public pages only.
Does Launchory give dofollow backlinks?
Yes. Every listing that embeds the Launchory badge on its own site and verifies it gets a dofollow link on an indexable listing page, and premium listings get one instantly. You can point this checker at your own Launchory listing to confirm it.
Are nofollow, ugc and sponsored directives or hints?
Hints, since Google changed the treatment on 1 March 2020. Google’s documentation says links marked with these rel attributes "will generally not be followed", which is deliberately weaker than a rule. In practice you should plan as though none of them pass ranking signals, because you have no way to know when Google decides otherwise.
Can a link carry more than one rel value?
Yes. Google documents that the values can be combined as a space-separated or comma-separated list — rel="ugc nofollow" is the example in its own docs. Our own outbound listing links use rel="nofollow ugc noopener" until a listing has earned dofollow, so you can see a real combined value by pointing this checker at a Launchory listing.
Does a nofollow link have any value at all?
Yes, just not the value you were counting. It still sends referral traffic, it still puts your name in front of the audience of the linking site, and a mention on a credible site is worth having on its own terms. What it does not do is contribute to link-based authority metrics — Ahrefs, for instance, ignores nofollow links entirely when it calculates Domain Rating.
What makes a dofollow link worthless anyway?
Three things, in the order we see them. The page carries a noindex rule, so it never enters the index and passes nothing. The page is disallowed in robots.txt, so crawlers never fetch it and never see the link. Or the link is added by JavaScript after load, so it is not in the HTML a crawler receives. This checker tests all three.
If a page is blocked in robots.txt, does its noindex still work?
No, and this catches people out. Google is explicit: for the noindex rule to be effective the page must not be blocked by robots.txt, because "if the page is blocked by a robots.txt file or the crawler can’t access the page, the crawler will never see the noindex rule, and the page can still appear in search results". Blocked and noindexed are different states with different consequences for a link sitting on the page.