Should you really eliminate nofollow for internal links to optimize your crawl budget?

Why does Google advise against nofollow for internal links?

Historically, some SEOs used the nofollow attribute on internal links to sculpt PageRank: the idea was to concentrate SEO juice on strategic pages by blocking the flow to sections deemed secondary, such as legal mentions or terms and conditions.

This practice, called PageRank Sculpting, lost its effectiveness after a Google update in 2009. Since then, the algorithm treats nofollow links as signals but no longer redistributes blocked juice elsewhere. In other words, adding nofollow does not optimize anything, it just wastes PageRank.

When could internal nofollow actually be justified?

John Mueller mentions an exception: massive navigations containing thousands of links. Typically, an e-commerce site with mega menus featuring multiple facets or a platform generating thousands of pagination or filter links can indeed saturate crawls.

In these rare cases, nofollow can help direct Googlebot towards high-value pages. But this situation concerns a tiny minority of sites. For 95% of web projects, navigation remains manageable without artificial tactics.

What does Google do with internal links by default?

Google analyzes the hierarchical structure of the site through internal linking. Each link transmits weight and indicates a semantic relationship between pages. The engine automatically detects patterns: main navigation, footer, sidebar, breadcrumb, contextual.

Adding nofollow disrupts this natural interpretation. Google then has to interpret a contradictory signal: why does a site link to an internal page but ask not to follow it? It creates noise in the algorithm.

• Internal nofollow blocks PageRank without redistributing it elsewhere
• Google recognizes a site's structure without artificial tweaks
• Only massive navigations (thousands of links) exceptionally justify nofollow
• Sculpting PageRank via nofollow has not worked since 2009
• It's better to optimize the site's architecture than to add unnecessary attributes

Does this statement really reflect the practices observed in the field?

Tests conducted on sites with and without internal nofollow show no significant difference in crawl or ranking in the majority of cases. Exceptions truly concern platforms with sprawling navigation: marketplaces, content aggregators, real estate portals with expansive filters.

On corporate sites, blogs, or standard e-commerce platforms (< 10,000 products), removing nofollow from footer or navigation links has never led to a drop. Conversely, enforcing nofollow everywhere has never improved rankings. In practical terms, this manipulation remains neutral at best, harmful at worst.

What nuances should be added to this advice?

Mueller talks about "thousands of links" but does not set a specific threshold. [To be verified]: does a site with 5,000 navigation links really pose a problem, or do you need to reach 20,000? Google remains vague, as often.

Another gray area: infinite pagination links or combinatorial filter systems generating hundreds of thousands of URLs. In these architectures, nofollow can indeed help, but other solutions exist: canonical tags, meta robots noindex, proper crawl management via robots.txt and pagination rel=next/prev tags (even though Google officially ignores them since 2019, they still structure the crawl).

Are there legitimate exceptions beyond mega-sites?

Yes, a few marginal cases persist. For example, a multilingual site with automatic language selectors generating hundreds of URL variants can benefit from targeted nofollow on certain loops. The same goes for dynamic sorting features (by price, date, popularity) creating duplicate content with no SEO value.

But be careful: in these situations, nofollow remains a crutch. The real solution lies in a restructuring of architecture, using proper canonicals, or implementing a crawl logic managed via Search Console. If you need to massively apply nofollow internally, it indicates your site has a structural problem rather than an optimization opportunity.

What should you actually do on a standard site?

First instinct: remove all unnecessary nofollow on internal links. Check footer, main navigation, and sidebar. If these links point to pages you want indexed and ranked, they should be classic dofollow. The only case where keeping nofollow makes sense: links to login pages, cart, user account, in short, private URLs with no SEO interest.

Second action: simplify your internal linking. A good site has a pyramid architecture, with homepage → categories → subcategories → product/article pages. If your navigation multiplies unnecessary cross-links, the problem is not nofollow; it’s the structure itself.

How to audit your navigation to spot excesses?

Use Screaming Frog or a similar crawler to extract the average number of links per page. If you exceed 200 links per page consistently, it’s a warning signal. Also, look at the crawl reports in Search Console: pages crawled massively but without traffic indicate a waste of crawl budget.

Another indicator: the ratio of indexed vs crawled pages. If Google crawls 50,000 URLs but only indexes 5,000, you probably have an excess of internal links pointing to low-value content. In this case, the solution is not nofollow but de-indexing (meta robots noindex) or completely removing the low-value URLs.

What mistakes should be absolutely avoided?

Never put nofollow on your contextual links, those that weave the semantic web between articles or products. These links are the heart of your on-page SEO, structuring the semantic cocoon and transferring juice to strategic pages.

Also avoid automatic nofollow on entire blocks (footer, sidebar) without analysis. Certainly, footers often contain legal links of little use, but they can also host accesses to high-value pages (blog, resources, guides). Manual auditing remains essential.

• Remove all unnecessary nofollow from main navigation and footer links to pages meant to be indexed
• Keep nofollow only for private pages (account, cart, login, internal search)
• Audit the number of links per page: beyond 200, optimize the architecture instead of adding nofollow
• Use Search Console to identify crawled but non-indexed pages, signaling waste of budget
• Favor canonicals and meta robots noindex for facets/filters rather than massive nofollow
• Ensure that contextual links (editorial internal linking) remain dofollow without exception