Percentage of NoFollow Internal Links reports the share of a page’s anchors that are both internal and carry nofollow in their rel attribute, returned as a percentage. A nonzero value is not automatically an error, but it flags internal links you have told crawlers not to follow, so it is worth a deliberate review.
| Factor ID | RG-LNK-023 |
|---|---|
| Family | Links on the page |
| Measurement | Percentage |
| Measured zone | Anchor links in the rendered page body |
What it measures
This factor is the share of all parsed anchors on the page that are classified as internal and contain nofollow. It isolates the internal links you have marked as not-to-be-followed and expresses them as a proportion of the page’s link set, giving you a quick read on how much of your own internal linking is being withheld from crawlers.
How RankGear measures it
RankGear treats relative URLs and same-host absolute HTTP or HTTPS URLs as internal, checks their rel values for nofollow, and divides the matching links by the total anchor count on the page. The denominator is every anchor RankGear parses, including external anchors, not just internal ones. If no anchors are recognized on the page, the compatibility result is undefined.
What RankGear looks for
<a href="/pricing/" rel="nofollow">Pricing</a>percentage = ( internal anchors with rel="nofollow" / total anchors on page ) × 100| Component | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Numerator | Anchors classified as internal whose rel contains nofollow |
| Denominator | All parsed anchors on the page, internal and external |
How to optimize it
Audit your internal nofollow links and keep them only where a deliberate technical policy requires it. Normal navigation and contextual internal links usually benefit from being crawlable, so a nofollow on one of them is more often an oversight than a strategy. Use robots controls, canonical tags, and information architecture for their intended purposes rather than relying on nofollow as a universal crawl-management tool. Read this figure as an observation that prompts a review, not a target to drive to a fixed number.
Important considerations
- A nonzero value is not automatically an error, but it warrants review.
- The denominator includes external anchors, so the percentage is measured against every link on the page, not internal links alone.
- The metric does not test the indexability of destination pages; it only inspects the
relattribute on the links themselves. - Follow current search-engine guidance for crawl and indexing controls rather than treating nofollow as a catch-all.
- Correlation is not causation: this factor is a prioritization signal that relates to patterns within a measured result set. It does not by itself make a page rank or guarantee any position.
Related factors
Part of the Factors reference · how RankGear measures · glossary.