Google New Links Attribute: Nofollow Vs Sponsored Vs UGC – SEO Impact
After a long years(approx 14) google announced big changes to how publishers should mark nofollow links. After this announcement Google shook up the SEO world. This article help to understand SEO impact of this changes, how nofollow link impact SEO, what is the replacement of nofollow and where we should use nofollow.
At the end of this article we also read the details about, when to use link attribute rel=”sponsored”, el=”ugc” and rel=”nofollow” along with difference between Nofollow Vs Sponsored Vs UGC links Attribute.
{Read:- Top 15 On Page SEO Checklist 2021 }
10 Things to know about Google New Link Attribute:
1. Link attribution can be done in three ways: “nofollow”, “sponsored”, and “ugc”.
2. For ranking purposes, Google now treats each of the nofollow attributes as “hints”.
3. Google may choose to ignore the directive and use nofollow links for rankings.
4. Google continues to ignore nofollow links for crawling and indexing purposes.
5. From March 1, 2020, onward Google begins treating nofollow attributes as “hints”, meaning they may choose to crawl them.
6. You can use the new attributes in combination with each other. For example, rel=”nofollow sponsored ugc” is valid.
7. Paid links must either use the nofollow or sponsored attribute, either/alone or in combination.
8. Simply using “ugc” on paid links could presumably lead to a penalty.
9. Publishers don’t have to do anything. Google offers no incentive or punishment for not changing.
10. Publishers using nofollow to control crawling may need to reconsider their strategy.
What is the ranking impact of nofollow links?
SEOs generally believed nofollow links used to tell Google bot/crawler, Not used for crawling and indexing and Not used for ranking, as confirmed by Google. Now, Google’s guidance states the new link attributes – nofollow, sponsored and ugc are treated like this:
- Still not used for crawling and indexing.
- For ranking purposes, all nofollow directives are now officially a “hint”.
- Google may choose to ignore it and use it for ranking purposes.
- Google confirmed that after March 1, 2020, these link attributes will be treated as hints, meaning:
- In some cases, they may be used for crawling and indexing.
- In some cases, they may be used for ranking.
Difference between Nofollow Vs Sponsored Vs UGC links Attribute
When to use link attribute rel=”sponsored”, el=”ugc” and rel=”nofollow”? Google has announced that nofollow link attribute (i.e. rel=”nofollow“) will be seen as a “hint” rather than as a directive for ranking purposes. In addition, Google is adding two additional link attributes, in addition to the rel=”nofollow” to provide a bit more context about the content you’re linking to.
1. rel=”sponsored” – For paid or sponsored or affiliate links.
2. rel=”ugc” – Links within all user-generated content.
3. rel=”nofollow” – A catchall for all nofollow links. These links generally won’t be used for ranking, crawling, or indexing purposes.
What will be link attributes impact after March 1, 2020?
Today Google will treat the nofollow attribute as a hint for ranking purposes. Meaning Google might count a link as credit, consider it as part of spam analysis or for other ranking purposes.
On March 2, 2020, Google will use it also for crawling and indexing. That means will Google use it as a “hint” as to what should be indexed or crawled but it is better to use robots.txt or meta tags for that purpose anyway.
