Google starts using the link attributes rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc” for ranking

Google this month announced that it is starting to use rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc” for ranking purposes, along with rel=”nofollow”.

Google introduced rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc” last year, to evolve the “nofollow” link attribute. However, only now announced that it has began to incorporate them for ranking purposes.

Google says the nofollow link attribute was originally introduced as a way to help fight comment spam and annotate sponsored links.

Google search team stated it saw an adoption of the new 2 link attributes (rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”) by webmasters around the world.

How to use the link attributes in SEO?

Google uses 3 link attributes as hints for ranking:

rel=”sponsored”

Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) as sponsored. More information on Google’s stance on paid links.

rel=”ugc”

Marks user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts.

rel=”nofollow”

Marks links that webmasters do not want to associate their website with.

Links in guest posts should be nofollow

John Mu, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, wrote on twitter that links in guest posts should be “nofollow”, Search Engine Roundtable reported.