What does a "nofollow" link indicate to search engines?

A "nofollow" link indicates to search engines that the website does not want to pass ranking credit to the linked page. This means that when a search engine crawls the webpage containing the nofollow link, it recognizes the link but does not consider it a vote of trust or authority for the destination page. The purpose of this attribute is to help control the flow of link equity and to prevent spamming or linking to low-quality sites.

In practice, nofollow links are often used in user-generated content, comments, or ads where the site owner cannot guarantee the quality of the linked content. This distinction is crucial for maintaining the integrity of search engine results, as it allows website owners to manage their link profiles and mitigate spam.