Google Webmaster Supports New Ways to Nofollow

Episode Highlights

Nofollow evolves to provide specific types of nofollow: Multiple rels are okay for each link
No need to change old links (thanks google!)

• rel=”sponsored”: Identifies links which are sponsored
• rel=”ugc”: Identify links to user-generated content (if you allow users to post content on your website)
• rel=”nofollow”: Same as always

Transcript

Juan: All right, we’ve got next up. Webmasters to support new ways for nofollow links. So the Google Webmasters are going to give you some more options as far as nofollow links. There’s going to be some updated references. So now you can identify which links are sponsored and also user-generated. So there’s two different ways you can identify a nofollow link now. The standard no follow will still be there. But interesting, you’re mentioning about the comments, and now someone comments and does a link. You want to identify it as user-generated. So you can tell Google, “Hey, I’m not associated with this, but I’m still going to let my users post.”

Rick: Yeah, and I think it’s super nice. Because as an SEO, I start to think about what is the link juice discount going to be for the different types of relationships? So to me sponsored would be something that Google could say, “Well they’re paying for it, therefore no value.” But user-generated content, theoretically if you’re actively managing the content that your users generate, it should be pretty good quality. And therefore some of those links may pass link juice. It’s all going to be a complete guess. But I imagine that over time we’re going to see some different sort of relations, outbound link relationship-type tags.

Rick: But these two are new. A couple of things on this, Google is saying, “Don’t go back and change all your no follows and try to categorize them correctly.” They’re just trying to establish this new standard moving forward. So yeah, we’ll see what happens with it. Don’t expect any major algorithm shifts as a result of it immediately, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

Resources

• Google

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