Nofollow Link is now a Hint for Crawling and Indexing

Google is expanding the nofollow link and introducing additional attributes to understand the nature of links.

The two new link attributes joining rel=“nofollow” are:

rel=“ugc”: It Identifies links that arise within user generated content, such as forum posts and comments.

rel=“sponsored”: It Identifies links on a site that were created as part of sponsorships, advertising or similar agreements.

From now onwards these attributes will be used as hints about which links to disbar as ranking signals. This means they’ll not be ignored, as has been the case till now.

Here’s Google’s explanation of why not to ignore these links completely

“Links hold valuable information that helps us in improving search, like how the words within links describe content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.”

What these changes mean for site owners and SEO’s, and Digital marketing company what they need to know.

Link Attributes are Still Important

It is still as important to sponsored links and flag ads to avoid possible link scheme penalties. Google prefers the use of ‘sponsored’ though ‘nofollow’ is also fine.

Need Not to Change Existing Attributes

There is no need to change any existing nofollow links. Google will continue to honor nofollow attributes that are currently in place.

Also the site owners and SEO’s do not need to change how they use the nofollow attribute to flag links pertaining to sponsorships and ads. However, when appropriate switching to the sponsored attribute is recommended by Google.

What is the Correct to use the New Attributes

You can use more than one attribute on a single link. For instance, rel=“ugc sponsored” will be acceptable for a sponsored link that appears within user generated content.

According to Google there is no wrong attribute to use except in the case of sponsored links. If a link when not a part of a sponsorship or ad and is marked as sponsored, then the impact will be lessened.

To sum up-any link that is clearly sponsored or an ad should use sponsored or nofollow.

Those who rely solely on the nofollow attribute, which was never recommended to begin with, should strongly consider switching to one of the new attributes. Get help from professional Digital marketing services for same.