{"id":35997,"date":"2020-05-05T18:48:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T23:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=35997"},"modified":"2023-10-05T03:11:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T08:11:16","slug":"nofollow-ugc-sponsored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/nofollow-ugc-sponsored\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of Nofollow, UGC, & Sponsored Link Attributes in 2020 [New Research]"},"content":{"rendered":"
In 2019, after 15 years, Google changed how nofollow<\/a> works. It\u2019s now a hint for both crawling and ranking. They also added two brand new attributes, rel=\u201cugc\u201cand rel=\u201csponsored\u201d.<\/div>\n

According to the announcement<\/a>, nofollow is meant for links where you don\u2019t want to imply any kind of endorsement or pass ranking credit to another page. Sponsored works the same way, but also shows that the link is an advertisement, paid placement, sponsorship, or affiliate link. UGC (User Generated Content) also works the same as nofollow but shows that the link was added by someone else. UGC should be used for comments, forum posts, or any other content sections where users can add content.<\/p>\n

The new attributes are optional. Google wants people to use them so they can better understand linking patterns and how people are linking across the web. But at this time, you don\u2019t have to make any changes if you don\u2019t want to<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those of you who use Ahrefs, you\u2019ll know that we added support for UGC and sponsored attributes early on. In fact, we started collecting data and added filters to the tool within two days of the official announcement.<\/p>\n

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We just rolled out support for \u201cUGC\u201d and \u201cSPONSORED\u201d link attributes!<\/p>\n

And it looks like we\u2019re the first to do it. \ud83d\udcaa<\/p>\n

cc: @jroakes<\/a> \ud83d\ude09 pic.twitter.com\/m4ji3X1JkN<\/a>\u2014 Ahrefs (@ahrefs) September 12, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n