Free tool
Nofollow link checker
A publisher says your link is live. Paste the page's source and your domain to confirm the link is there, what the anchor says, and whether it's followed or marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
Subdomains count too (www, blog, app).
View Page Source → select all → paste. Nothing is uploaded.
Verdict
Links to your domain
| Anchor | URL | rel | Counts? |
|---|
What counts as a real link
| What you see | Does it pass value? | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| No rel, or rel="noopener" / "noreferrer" | Yes. These only affect how the browser opens the link. | Nothing. Log it as won. |
| rel="nofollow" | Treated as a hint not to count it. | Ask politely if it was intentional. Accept site-wide policies. |
| rel="sponsored" | No. It marks a paid or affiliate link. | If you didn't pay, ask the editor to correct it. |
| rel="ugc" | No. It marks comments and user posts. | Comment links aren't link building. Move on. |
| Page has meta robots noindex or nofollow | Little to none. | Worth a note to the editor; the page may be a draft or archive. |
Check again in a month
Links change. Editors refresh posts, swap tools, and some CMS plugins add nofollow to every outbound link after an update. Re-check placements you care about every few weeks, or let BacklinkGenie do it: every won link is re-checked weekly and you get an email if it disappears or turns nofollow.
Checking once is not enough: links get removed, edited or switched to nofollow when posts are refreshed. Backlink monitoring explains how to catch that early, and if a link disappears, the link reclamation email is the polite way to ask for it back. One common surprise: links in wire-distributed press releases are almost always nofollow. If you use the press release generator, treat the release as a reference for journalists, not as the link itself.
Questions people ask
What's the difference between nofollow, sponsored and ugc?
All three are rel values that tell Google not to treat the link as an editorial vote. nofollow is the general one. sponsored marks paid or affiliate links. ugc marks links in comments and forum posts. Google treats them as hints, but for link building you should count only links with none of the three.
How do I get a page's HTML?
Open the page, right-click and choose View Page Source, then select all and copy. Paste that into the tool. If the site builds its links with JavaScript, use Inspect instead, right-click the <html> element and choose Copy outer HTML, so you get the links as the browser rendered them.
The publisher says the link is live but the tool finds nothing. Why?
Check you copied the source of the exact URL they gave you, including any trailing slash or query string. Some sites cache old versions for a few hours. If it still isn't there, the link may sit on a different page, or point to a subdomain or a redirect. The tool matches your domain and all its subdomains.
Should I ask the publisher to remove nofollow?
Only if they agreed to an editorial link. A polite note works best: thank them, mention the link is marked nofollow, and ask if that was intentional. If the site applies nofollow to every outbound link as policy, accept it. Never offer payment to change it.
Does the page's own meta robots tag matter?
Yes. A page with <meta name="robots" content="nofollow"> asks search engines to ignore every link on it, and a noindex page may drop out of the index entirely. The tool flags both, because a followed link on a nofollow page isn't worth much.
Related
Disavow file generator
Paste spammy domains or URLs and download a clean disavow.txt in the exact format Google Search Console accepts.
Anchor text distribution checker
Paste your anchors and see the split between branded, URL, generic, partial and exact-match text, with over-optimization flags.
Link building cost per link calculator
Work out what one earned link really costs when you do outreach yourself, hire an agency or buy placements, using your own reply and win rates.
See where your next links could come from.
Paste your URL. The agent finds lists, comparison pages, resource pages and guides where your product fits, checks each site and finds the editor to contact. Free, no card.
