Semrush found nofollow links track with AI visibility as closely as follow links across 1,000 domains. What that means, what it doesn't, and what to do.
Stop filtering nofollow links out of your outreach. In a 1,000-domain study, Semrush found nofollow links tracked with AI visibility as closely as follow links did, and Authority Score showed a stronger link with AI mentions (Pearson 0.65) than follow links (0.334) or nofollow links (0.340) did. That is a correlation, not proof that a nofollow link causes AI mentions, but it is enough to change which placements you chase and which ones you maintain.
What the Semrush study measured
Semrush ran the study with Kevin Indig, taking "1,000 randomly selected domains inside Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit" and tracking how often each was mentioned across ChatGPT, ChatGPT with Search, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity. It then compared those mentions against backlink signals, including the "Ratio of follow vs. nofollow links", using Pearson and Spearman correlations.
The two link types came out almost level:
- Follow links: Pearson 0.334, Spearman 0.504.
- Nofollow links: Pearson 0.340, Spearman 0.509.
Authority Score, Semrush's composite link-quality metric, showed a stronger relationship with AI mentions: Pearson 0.65 and Spearman 0.57. Semrush also found that "big visibility gains only appear once a site reaches the higher authority tiers."
Read those numbers for what they are. A correlation says domains with more of one thing tend to have more of the other. It does not say which causes which.
The platform split
The study adds a small twist by platform: "Gemini and ChatGPT tend to favor nofollow links a bit more, while Google AI Overviews and Perplexity lean more toward follow links." Semrush gives Reddit, Quora and Wikipedia as examples of strong nofollow links. The gaps are small, so don't build a separate plan for each platform on them.
Why the old rule made sense
Google's own history explains why the advice to ignore nofollow links took hold. In its 2019 post on evolving nofollow, Google says: "When nofollow was introduced, Google would not count any link marked this way as a signal to use within our search algorithms. This has now changed." Since then, sponsored, ugc and nofollow "are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search."
Google was careful about what that means in practice: "In most cases, the move to a hint model won't change the nature of how we treat such links." It added that it would "generally treat them as we did with nofollow before and not consider them for ranking purposes". That was Google's position in 2019 for classic search. The Semrush data is about AI mentions, which is a different question.
Paid placements are a separate case. Google's post says ad and sponsored links should carry sponsored or nofollow "to avoid a possible link scheme action", so tag them whatever the AI data says. The Semrush study did not look at sponsored links separately, but nofollow links as a group tracked with AI mentions about as closely as follow links did.
Which nofollow links to go after
Use authority as the filter, not the attribute. Semrush's own advice for nofollow links is that "They contribute meaningfully to AI visibility, especially when they come from high-authority sites." A rule of thumb we use: judge a nofollow placement exactly as you would a follow one, by the site's authority and how closely it matches your topic.
- Worth pursuing: a mention on a well-known publication, an established industry directory, or a community thread that people read and reply to.
- Not rescued by this data: a nofollow link on a weak or unrelated site.
Keep the ones you have fresh
Kevin Indig's advice in the study is specific: "Just like you update blog posts, update nofollow placements. Rotate in new data points, update product screenshots, or refresh stats on contributed articles your brand has earned nofollow links with, so links remain relevant and referenced."
Here is a short routine for it:
- Export your links and split them into follow and nofollow. SerpCrest's Bulk DoFollow / NoFollow Checker checks a list of URLs for live, dofollow and indexed status.
- In the nofollow list, mark the placements on high-authority, on-topic sites.
- For each one you control or contributed, such as a guest article, a profile or a directory listing, update stale numbers, screenshots and descriptions.
- Drop any dofollow-only rule from your outreach criteria for sites that pass the authority test.
If the placement is an image, the same study found image links tracked with AI mentions even more closely than text links, and our post on image backlinks in AI search covers how to earn them. For how brand mentions without any link compare, see backlinks versus brand mentions in AI citations.
