GitHub README links are all nofollow and pass no SEO value, audit confirms
A developer testing backlink value for a newly launched domain found that every link GitHub renders to external sites carries a rel="nofollow" attribute, including README files, About fields, issues, wikis, and gists. The finding was verified using curl and Perl scripts across multiple repositories, including a large public project, returning zero dofollow links in each case. GitHub applies nofollow universally through its HTML sanitiser with no repository-level setting to override it. By contrast, a self-hosted GitHub Pages subdomain was found to serve outbound links without nofollow, making it a potential alternative for developers seeking crawlable backlinks. The author notes that nofollow links still hold indirect value for URL discovery and referral traffic, particularly for new domains trying to get indexed.
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