~/guides cat find-every-nofollow-link-on-a-page.md
Uses Scalpel LinksFind every nofollow link on a page
List every nofollow, sponsored, and UGC link on a page, with anchor text kept, using Scalpel Links to export or Scalpel SEO to highlight in place.
Maybe you're auditing a guest post, checking that your affiliate links carry the right disclosure, or reviewing what a page vouches for. Either way you want a clean list of the links that carry rel="nofollow", plus its cousins sponsored and ugc.
There are two good ways to do this in the browser. Use Scalpel Links when you want an exported list; use Scalpel SEO when you want to see the links outlined on the page itself.
Step by step
Know what counts as nofollow
rel can hold three related values: nofollow (don't vouch for this link), sponsored (paid or affiliate), and ugc (user-generated, like a comment). Since 2019 Google treats all three as hints rather than strict rules, but they still shape how a page passes credit, so it's worth getting them right.
Extract every link with Scalpel Links
Click the Scalpel Links icon to grab every hyperlink on the page. In the column picker, switch on the rel column, so the nofollow, sponsored, and ugc values sit right next to each URL and its anchor text.
Filter to just the nofollowed ones
Type nofollow into the filter box to narrow the table live. Want sponsored and ugc as well? Switch the filter to regular-expression mode and use nofollow|sponsored|ugc. The match count tells you how many there are at a glance.
Export the list
Export as CSV, Markdown, or JSON. Anchor text and rel are preserved in every format, so you have a record of exactly which links were nofollowed and what they said, ready to hand over or diff later.
Or highlight them in place with Scalpel SEO
Prefer to see them on the page? Open Scalpel SEO, go to the Links tab, filter to nofollow, and turn on highlighting. It outlines nofollow, sponsored, UGC, and target="_blank" links that are missing a rel, directly in the page, which is handy for spotting one in a long article.
Sanity-check the important links
Paid and affiliate links should be sponsored; genuinely user-generated links should be ugc; editorial links you simply don't want to endorse can be nofollow. The one to fix is a paid link that's still a plain follow, which is the case Google's guidelines care about most.
A console one-liner to confirm the count
The extensions keep anchor text and export cleanly, but if you just want a fast sanity count, paste this into the DevTools console:
// Every link whose rel includes "nofollow", with its rel and URL
[...document.querySelectorAll('a[rel~="nofollow"]')]
.map(a => `${a.rel.padEnd(24)} ${a.href}`)
.forEach(line => console.log(line));Swap nofollow for sponsored or ugc to check those. The tilde selector matches the value as a whole word inside rel, so it won't false-match.