Outbound link
An outbound link is a link on your website that points to a page on another website.
An outbound link is a link from a page on your site to a page on someone else's site. When your blog post about brewing methods links to a study on coffee extraction, that's an outbound link. To the site you link to, it's a backlink.
Outbound links help your readers, and they show where your facts come from.
Why link out at all
It can feel like sending people away. But a page that backs up its claims with sources is more useful, and more believable, than one that asks you to take its word. When you quote a figure, link to where it came from. When another page explains something better than you can, point to it.
For example, say Fernhill Coffee writes that its farms are certified by a fair trade body. A link to the certification body's own listing of Fernhill lets anyone check it in a click. Without it, the claim is just Fernhill's word.
Marking the links you don't vouch for
Some outbound links aren't recommendations. Links in comments, paid placements and affiliate links fall into this group. Google asks you to mark them with rel values: sponsored for paid links, ugc for links your users added, and nofollow for anything else you don't want to vouch for. Its guide to qualifying outbound links explains each.
Outbound links and AI search
Clear sources make a page easier to trust and easier to check. When a page says where its numbers come from, an AI platform that reads it has something firmer to repeat, and readers who follow the answer's citation can see the evidence too.
It also helps to see your own site the way an answer does. In AnswerOrbit, Sources shows the pages each answer used and the ones it linked to. Those are the platforms' outbound links, and you want to be among them.