Google Update On NoFollow Links: How UGC & Sponsored Links Impact SEO
Google has just announced an update for NoFollow link attribute on this 10th September 2019. And added two more attributes as new ways to identify the nature of links. This is in a bid to give value to and increase the understanding of the link graph. It marks the fundamental change related to one of their important signals used in the algorithms for ranking. From March 2020 onwards, the webmasters can give more information on the external links by adding rel=“ugc” and rel=“sponsored”. This works alongside the attribute rel=“nofollow” introduced approx. 15 years before.
The backlink profile of the site such as the quality and volume of links from referencing website correlates highly with related popularity along with related performance in the organic searches. This latest update is going to have a significant impact on the mode of calculation of link equity or popularity.
It means that after March 2020, there is going to have a huge effect on the search engine ranking.
Three Types of rel= “ ” Link Attributes (NoFollow, UGC & Sponsored)
- rel=“nofollow” — this attribute is helpful when you need to link a page but do not wish to imply an endorsement such as passing along the ranking credit onto another page. Google introduced this attribute many years ago to combat UGC spam in the form of reviews and forum comments that used to affect the search result quality. Now webmasters can mark up the links from website sections and search engines disregard them after identification in algorithm calculations.
- rel=“ugc” — is the User Generated Content recommended for the links present within UGC as forum posts, guest comments and comments.
- rel=“sponsored” — this attribute is for identifying the links present on the site created as part of compensation agreements, sponsorships, or advertisements. This attribute helps to avoid possible link schemes to manipulate the site ranking or page rank and you can use it to flag such links. It hints that this is a sponsored link from some user-generated content.
How Nofollow Was Considered Before
Google introduced rel=“nofollow” to combat comment and link spams. This signified that hyperlinks with this rule applied would pass the zero SEO value. It in turn deterred the spammers from the abuse of forums, blogs, and other similar public websites. Google made the application of nofollow attributes necessary to paid for and sponsored links.
Explore here -> The purpose of adding two new link attributes (UGC and Sponsored)
