Page-level nofollow: what it means and when to remove it
What a page-level nofollow directive does and how it stops link equity flowing from a page. We flag every page with a meta nofollow, free.
What it means
A page-level nofollow directive (set via a <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> tag in the <head> or as an X-Robots-Tag header) tells Google not to follow any links on that page. It does not prevent the page itself from being indexed — it only affects how the crawler treats the page's outbound links.
Why it matters
When Googlebot encounters nofollow at the page level, it skips following all links on that page during that crawl pass. This wastes crawl budget on pages that should be passing link equity into the rest of the site, and it can delay discovery of linked pages. For AI agents that parse the same HTML, it similarly reduces the chance that linked resources are surfaced in responses.
How to fix it
- Remove the
<meta name="robots" content="nofollow">tag from the page's<head>, or change its value toall. - If the directive is set via an
X-Robots-TagHTTP header, remove it or replace it withall. - Verify the page now returns
200with nonofollowin the response headers, and re-request indexing in Search Console.
When it's not a problem
This is fine when the page is intentionally a landing or hub page whose links you want to keep separate from the main link graph — for example, a terms page, a login page, or a page whose outbound links are purely navigational rather than editorial. It is also acceptable when you deliberately want to conserve crawl budget on a high-traffic page with many low-value links.
How common is it?
65 audited sites in our corpus currently show this issue. The breakdowns below show which platforms, gatekeepers, verticals and countries are most exposed.
Audit your own site — free
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