Internal links should be followed, not nofollowed. The nofollow attribute tells search engines not to pass authority through a link, and applying it internally sabotages your own SEO by blocking PageRank flow to pages you actually want to rank. Google's crawlers use internal links to discover pages, understand site structure, and distribute ranking power. When you nofollow an internal link, you're telling Google that page isn't worth endorsing, even though it's on your own site. This made limited sense under pre-2020 rules when nofollow guaranteed PageRank wouldn't flow, but even then it was rarely smart. After Google changed nofollow to a hint in 2020, nofollowing internal links just introduces unpredictability without benefit. The only legitimate internal nofollow cases are extremely narrow: - Login, register, or logout links that create infinite crawl loops - User-generated content you don't editorially vouch for (forum signatures, unmoderated comments) - Paid internal placements treated like ads, though this is rare - Faceted navigation or filter URLs already handled by robots.txt or URL parameters in Search Console Even for low-value pages like print versions or session-based duplicates, canonical tags, robots meta tags, or parameter handling are better solutions than nofollow. At Ottawa SEO, we've seen sites recover 15–30% ranking improvements on key pages after removing internal nofollows that previous agencies added to "sculpt PageRank," a strategy that hasn't worked since 2009. The default should be simple: internal links use normal anchor tags with no rel attribute. Your internal linking structure is one of your strongest SEO levers. You control the anchor text, placement, and frequency. Nofollowing these links is like refusing to vote for your own content. If a page isn't worth linking to with full authority, question whether it should exist at all or be noindexed instead. Let your internal links do their job and flow equity where you need rankings.