Are Wikipedia Links Nofollow? Their Real SEO Value

English Wikipedia has added rel="nofollow" to all external links since January 2007 to discourage spam. Other language editions and sister projects such as Wikimedia do the same. A typical citation link in the page source looks like this:

<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://example.com/study">Example Study, 2026</a>

Internal links between Wikipedia articles are followed. Links pointing to other websites are not.

In 2019 Google changed how it treats nofollow. It's now a hint: Google may still use nofollow links for crawling, indexing and understanding relationships between sites. Google added the rel="ugc" and rel="sponsored" attributes at the same time, and stated that link attributes help it understand the web rather than acting as strict instructions.

So a nofollow link from a site as trusted as Wikipedia is not ignored. It's simply not treated as a straightforward vote.

• Referral traffic. Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites in the world. Readers who click a citation are researching that exact topic, so they convert well.
• Mirror and scraper sites. Many sites republish Wikipedia content. Copies of your citation often appear on those pages, and some of those links are followed.
• Discovery by journalists and writers. People who write about a topic often start on Wikipedia and its sources. A Wikipedia citation regularly leads to editorial, followed links later.
• Entity and trust signals. Search engines and AI assistants lean heavily on Wikipedia to understand brands and topics. Being cited associates your domain with the subject.
• A natural link profile. Strong sites earn a mix of followed and nofollow links. A Wikipedia link is the kind of nofollow link real authorities have.

Don't buy Wikipedia backlinks expecting an overnight ranking jump from one link. Buy them for trust, visibility and the secondary links they attract. Pair them with strong content and followed editorial links, and they'll do their part.