The URL under review is discovered to have a mix of follow and nofollow inbound links.
Why is this important?
Applying the nofollow attribute on an internal link signals to search engines that they should not follow that particular link. This action also prevents the transfer of ranking signals, such as link equity, to the target URL.
Typically, when a URL is deliberately linked with nofollow attributes, it's because the site owner intends to restrict the passing of link equity or prevent the crawling of that page by search engines.
Nonetheless, when a page also receives followed links, it contradicts the intended restriction, which might indicate a configuration oversight or mistake.
What does the Optimization check?
The Optimization will activate if an internal URL is found to have at least one follow and one nofollow internal link according to the Sitebulb audit.
Examples that trigger this Optimization
Any internal URL detected by the Sitebulb scan that has both types of links—followed and nofollowed—will cause this Optimization to fire.
How do you resolve this issue?
The first step is determining if the URL in question should predominantly receive follow or nofollow links. After this is clear, you can address each linking instance individually.
If the URL is supposed to collect only nofollow links, your task is to locate the follow links and then modify each to include rel="nofollow". Conversely, if only follow links are appropriate, each nofollow link must be adjusted to remove the nofollow attribute.
How do you get more data from Sitebulb?
To scrutinize the links to the URL, you can access the URL List that was flagged by the Optimization. Within the list, select a URL to inspect its details, then locate the Incoming Links tab to review a grid of linking URLs on one side and their follow/nofollow status on the other.
<img alt="Incoming links representation in Sitebulb with nofollow attribute visibility" />
To deeply analyze URLs with abundant incoming links, exceeding 100, it is advisable to export the data to a spreadsheet. To achieve this, click the green Export All button in Sitebulb.