Link Attributes: nofollow, sponsored, and ugc Explained

Link attributes tell search engines something about the relationship behind a link. Google supports three values of the rel attribute for this purpose: sponsored for paid or advertising links, ugc for user-generated content, and nofollow when the others do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with the linked page (Google on qualifying outbound links). Since 2019, Google treats all three as hints rather than strict directives. Using the right attribute keeps paid and user-submitted links within Google’s policies; none of them promises a specific ranking outcome for either site.

The three values

Google notes that nofollow “was previously recommended” for paid links, “though sponsored is preferred”, and that multiple values can be combined in a space- or comma-separated list.

Implementation examples

<!-- A paid placement or affiliate link -->
<a href="https://www.example-store.com/product" rel="sponsored">Example blender</a>

<!-- A link inside a user comment -->
<a href="https://www.example-forum.com/thread/123" rel="ugc">user's link</a>

<!-- A link you do not want to vouch for -->
<a href="https://www.example-unverified.com/" rel="nofollow">unverified source</a>

<!-- A paid link inside user-generated content -->
<a href="https://www.example-store.com/" rel="ugc sponsored">sponsored forum link</a>

CMS and forum software can apply ugc to user content automatically. For affiliate programs, apply sponsored at the template or plugin level so no link is missed.

Hints, not commands

Google’s September 2019 announcement explained the change: sponsored, ugc and nofollow all “now work today as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes”, and nofollow became a hint for crawling and indexing purposes as of March 1, 2020 (Google’s 2019 announcement). On using the wrong attribute, the announcement said: “There’s no wrong attribute except in the case of sponsored links.” Flagging a UGC or non-ad link as sponsored has at most the effect that Google “might not count the link as a credit for another page”; a paid link, by contrast, still has to carry sponsored or nofollow.

What “hint” means in practice:

• Google may still use a qualified link to understand the web; it does not promise to ignore it.
• A qualified link is not a ranking credit you control.
• The attributes are not a way to hide pages: to keep Google from fetching a page on your own site, Google says to use robots.txt, not nofollow.

When attributes are required by policy

Google’s link spam policy lists buying or selling links for ranking purposes and text ads that do not block ranking credit as link spam, and states: “It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute value” (Google’s spam policies). So:

• Paid links, sponsored posts, affiliate links: sponsored (or nofollow).
• Links in reviews where the reviewer received the product free: treat as an exchange of value; sponsored.
• User comments and forum posts: ugc.
• Editorial links you chose to make because they help readers: no attribute needed.

The same attributes also appear in the fix for paid links already pointing at your site: Google’s remediation steps for an unnatural links manual action ask site owners to have such links removed or qualified, and to use the disavow tool for the links that could not be removed.

Internal links

Do not use nofollow on internal links to “sculpt” how value flows within your site. Google’s guidance for links within your own site is to use robots.txt if you need to prevent fetching, and its link best practices say to use nofollow “only when you don’t trust the source, and not for every external link on your site” (Google’s link best practices).

What attributes do not do

• They do not guarantee that a linked page gains or loses rankings.
• They do not fix other problems on a page, such as content that misleads readers about who paid for it.
• They do not prevent the linked page from being indexed through other links.

Link attribute checklist

• [ ] Paid, affiliate and exchanged-value links carry sponsored.
• [ ] User-generated links carry ugc, applied by the platform.
• [ ] nofollow used for links you do not vouch for, not for every external link.
• [ ] No nofollow on internal links for sculpting.
• [ ] Editorial links left unqualified when you stand behind them.

The attributes are a way of being honest with search engines about why a link exists. Used that way, they keep paid and user content inside Google’s policies and leave editorial links to do their normal work.