Google Says Don’t Nofollow Links To Your Own Social Media Profiles

Google’s John Mueller said on Reddit that when it comes to linking from your site to your social medial profiles you should not nofollow those links. He added that you should add the rel=me attribute to them because it is an open standard to help others validate that this profile is yours.

John wrote, “Links to your own profile? Absolutely not,” do not nofollow those links. Of course, links in general on social media sites are nofollowed, including links in your bio page on social media platforms. But John is talking about the other way, you linking from your own site to your social media profiles – not the other way around.

John added, “Add a rel=me (this is more of a thing on Mastodon & open-standards based social media, but still a good practice), don’t add a rel=nofollow — it’s pretty much the link you should be able to trust the most. Promote your social profile! It’s all “you”, why would you not want to recognize that? Or is your social media profile so bad that you don’t want to be associated with it? (then, well, maybe make it less bad).”

It is less about Google and more about how some social media platforms work to verify who you are.

I love how John added, “[omg, this will certainly be a fun ride]” yes because this is going to be so misunderstood.

So this is really not a Google SEO question, to be clear.

Forum discussion at Reddit.