Google Releases Two New Link Attributes to Support 'Nofollow'

Google released two new link attributes designed to support the 'nofollow' label and better describe links on your site.

Today, we’re announcing two new link attributes that provide webmasters with additional ways to identify to Google Search the nature of particular links. These, along with nofollow, are summarized below:

• rel="sponsored": Use the sponsored attribute to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements.
  
• rel="ugc": UGC stands for User Generated Content, and the ugc attribute value is recommended for links within user generated content, such as comments and forum posts.
  
• rel="nofollow": Use this attribute for cases where you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.

When nofollow was introduced, Google would not count any link marked this way as a signal to use within our search algorithms. This has now changed. All the link attributes -- sponsored, UGC and nofollow -- are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. We’ll use these hints -- along with other signals -- as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.

• Actionable Strategy — Take the time to read Google's announcement in its entirety so that you can get the news directly as Google released it. And then you can decide to do nothing and let your existing 'nofollow' links be treated the same as they've always been.

  Or, if you prefer, you can go ahead and start using these new attributes to better describe your links and the content they're pointing to. Regardless, this isn't going to break the Internet and setting aside your valuable time to help Google better label links isn't going to serve you or your bottom line.

  This rollback is happening because Google essentially cut away a huge swath of link data from their algorit...