• Search Engine Land
  • Sections
    • SEO
    • SEM
    • Local
    • Retail
    • Google
    • Bing
    • Social
    • Resources
    • More
    • Home
  • Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • Live
  • More
  • Events
  • SUBSCRIBE

Search Engine Land

Search Engine Land
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social
  • Resources
  • More
  • Newsletters
  • Home
SEO

Google’s new treatment of nofollow links has arrived

Here’s what you need to be aware of as Google begins viewing nofollow links as a hint for crawling and indexing.

George Nguyen on February 28, 2020 at 8:00 am
  • More

As of Sunday, Mar. 1, Google is treating the nofollow link attribute as a hint, rather than a directive, for crawling and indexing purposes. Google is already treating all link attributes (sponsored, UGC and nofollow) as hints for ranking purposes and has been doing so since it made the original announcement in September.

First introduced in 2005, the nofollow link attribute was created to stop spam links from passing credit and manipulating ranking signals. Check out our nofollow explainer to get caught up on everything there is to know about the original nofollow attribute.

Defining link attributes. Last year, Google introduced new link attributes for sponsored and user-generated content (UGC).

rel="sponsored": This attribute can be used to identify links on your site that are part of an advertisement, sponsorship or some other paid agreement.

rel="ugc": This attribute is recommended for links appearing in user-generated content, like comments and forum posts.

rel="nofollow": This attribute can be applied to any scenario in which you want to link to a page but don’t want to pass along ranking credit to it.

Why Google introduced these new attributes. Google’s Gary Illyes and Danny Sullivan, who co-authored the September announcement, have said that the new attributes serve to help Google understand the web better and allow site owners to classify the nature of their links, if they want to.

But this is key: Whether you implement the attributes does not affect your site and doing so is completely voluntary.

What you should be doing. “If you were using nofollow to block any sensitive areas of your site that you didn’t want crawled, it probably makes sense to go block these in a different way,” Patrick Stox, technical SEO and brand ambassador for Ahrefs, told Search Engine Land. There are various ways, such as robots.txt or meta tags, that you can use to regulate how Google crawls and indexes pages.

As for the UGC and sponsored attributes, implementing them is voluntary. If you want to provide Google with that information (and have links classified for your own reference), feel free to do so. Whether you do or don’t won’t impact your site.



About The Author

George Nguyen
George Nguyen is an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic search, podcasting and e-commerce. His background is in journalism and content marketing. Prior to entering the industry, he worked as a radio personality, writer, podcast host and public school teacher.

Related Topics

Channel: SEOGoogle: SEOLink Building: GeneralLink Building: Paid Links

We're listening.

Have something to say about this article? Share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group.

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.

Processing...Please wait.

See terms.

ATTEND OUR EVENTS

Lorem ipsum doler this is promo text about SMX events.

Available On-Demand: SMX Create

May 18-19, 2021: SMX London

June 8-9, 2021: SMX Paris

June 15-16, 2021: SMX Advanced

June 21-22, 2021: SMX Advanced Europe

August 17, 2021: SMX Convert

November 9-10, 2021: SMX Next

December 14, 2021: SMX Code

Available On-Demand: SMX

Available On-Demand: SMX Report

×


Learn More About Our SMX Events

Discover actionable tactics that can help you overcome crucial marketing challenges. Our next conference will be held:

Next Event: Sept. 14-15, 2021

Available On-Demand: March 2021

Available On-Demand: October 2020

×

Attend MarTech - Click Here


Learn More About Our MarTech Events

White Papers

  • Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms
  • Selecting a Customer Data Platform For Your Organization: The 2020 Gartner Market Guide
  • The Complete Guide to Web Core Vitals
  • The New Era of Automation in SEO
  • Nielsen Annual Marketing Report: Era of Adaptation
See More Whitepapers

Webinars

  • Drive Customer Engagement with the Power of Personalization
  • 7 Use Cases That Prove Why You Should Implement DAM
  • Accelerate Your SEO & Content Marketing Program with 4 Key Milestones
See More Webinars

Research Reports

  • Local Marketing Solutions for Multi-Location Businesses
  • Enterprise Digital Asset Management Platforms
  • Identity Resolution Platforms
  • Customer Data Platforms
  • B2B Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Call Analytics Platforms
See More Research

Attend SMX For Only $199

h
Receive daily search news and analysis.

Channels

  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Local
  • Retail
  • Google
  • Bing
  • Social

Our Events

  • SMX
  • MarTech

Resources

  • White Papers
  • Research
  • Webinars

About

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Marketing Opportunities
  • Staff

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Youtube

© 2021 Third Door Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your privacy means the world to us. We share your personal information only when you give us explicit permission to do so, and confirm we have your permission each time. Learn more by viewing our privacy policy.Ok