Sponsored and user-generated content

Publishers can add UGC and sponsored attribute tags to outbound links to help Googlebot to better understand the nature of links.

Until September 2019, nofollow tags were used to flag sponsored or advertising links that failed to meet Google’s guidelines.

The nofollow link attribute was first introduced in January 2005 to address comment spamming issues and to identify untrusted links from user-generated content (UGC).

By September that year, Google was also recommending its use for advertising-related links.

The UGC attribute is used to mark links mentioned in content such as forum posts or user comments.

If your website receives a steady flow of user comments, checking the quality of every suggested link becomes difficult. Marking user-posted links with the UGC attribute helps Google understand why such links were added and whether those links should be included in PageRank calculation.

You can remove this attribute if you wish to recognize trustworthy users who make useful contributions.

Internal and external linking are crucial components of Google’s ranking algorithm and the information contained therein will see websites climb up or slide down the search engine results pages (SERPs).

If the content on your website has outbound links, Google recommends using an appropriate link attribute for each. However, these link attributes are merely hints for site rankings.

When it comes to outbound links used in coupon/voucher/offer websites, it is mandatory to use link attributes to adhere to Google guidelines.

Listed below are different scenarios and the relevant attributes one can use:

When creating an outbound link for a website, you should use the rel=“nofollow” attribute to indicate that the link should not be counted when calculating a website’s PageRank.

When linking to a coupon/voucher/offer, you should also use the rel=“sponsored” attribute to indicate that the link is sponsored and should not be counted in a website’s PageRank.

The rel=“nofollow” and rel=“sponsored” attributes can be used together to indicate that the link should not be counted and should not be followed by Google.

You can also use the rel=“nofollow” and rel=“noarchive” attributes together to indicate that the link should not be archived by Google.

The rel=“nofollow”, rel=“noarchive”, and rel=“nofollow” attributes can also be used together to indicate that the link should not be followed by Google.

Publishers should use an appropriate link attribute for each outbound link they create.

The rel=“nofollow” attribute should be used to indicate that the link should not be counted when calculating a website’s PageRank

Google recommends using nofollow, sponsored, or UGC link attributes to identify links that need them.

The nofollow attribute tells Google not to crawl the linked page.

The sponsored and UGC attributes are added by WordPress automatically when you select the Open in New Tab option to disable the link tracking for security purposes.

Pitfalls to avoid include depending on the attributes and not marking paid links.

Do not overuse outbound links.

Link sparingly to avoid harming your website's SEO value.

Consider the trustworthiness of the site you are linking to.

Avoid linking to sites with explicit/shocking content.

Link to sites that are legal and compliant with the DMCA.