Google’s New Two Link Attributes !!

Google Introduced Two New Link Attributes

Till date, we have two types of links dofollow and nofollow, where dofollow is considered more potent in comparison to nofollow. For many nofollow link, attribute has no value. But in reality, it has significant importance like the dofollow link attribute, all one needs to do is to optimize them wisely and get the most from search engine. We will not get into deep on this as there is something more interesting that you would love to know.

Today Google announced two new links attributes. 

According to Google, new attributes help them to understand links better. The new link attributes are the following:

rel=”sponsored”: This link attribute indicates that a particular link has been created as a part of the sponsorship, advertising or anything similar.

rel=”ugc”: This link attribute appears within user-generated content, for instance in comments and forum posts.

The above two link attributes were added to rel=”nofollow.” These two link attributes will be used to determine ranking signals. It simply means either of three can’t be ignored.

Here is what Google has to say on it:

“Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe the content they point at. Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.”

Things You Need to Know

To avoid any link scheme penalties, it is still vital to flag sponsored links and ads. Google appreciates if you use the rel=”sponsored” link attribute but using the rel=”nofollow” is still fine.

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How to Use New Link Attributes

Individually you can use both new links attributes the same as we are using the nofollow attribute. The interesting thing is you can use more than one attribute on a single link. For instance, mentioning rel=”ugc sponsored” is the best way to define a sponsored link that occurs within user-generated content.

Apart from the nofollow, new link attributes sponsored & ugc go into effect today. Until March 2020, nofollow will be treated as a hint.

Need of New Link Attribution

Back in 2004, Google introduced nofollow link attribute to overcome comment spam. After that, it is being used to flag ads or sponsored links. Nofollow attributes help the websites to avoid link scheme penalties.

As you know that dofollow links pass the link juice while nofollow doesn’t. Till date, Google has only two ways to determine links, but after introducing new link attributes, Google is now capable of getting a better idea or hint from the link type.  It will help the algorithm to decide whether the particular link should be given any ranking benefit or it should be ignored entirely.

Have any questions? Let us know in the comment section. Apart from that, feel free to share your thoughts.