Google lets you specify your relationship with linked pages by adding certain values to the rel attribute in your <a> tags. This helps Google understand which links are paid, user-generated, or that you don’t want to endorse or pass ranking signals to.
Common rel values for outbound links: #
- rel=”sponsored”
Use this for advertisements, paid links, or sponsored content.
<a rel=”sponsored” href=”https://example.com/paid-content”>Sponsored Link</a>
Note: Previously, nofollow was used for this, but Google now prefers sponsored for paid links.
- rel=”ugc” (User Generated Content)
Use this for links inside user-generated content, such as comments, forum posts, or reviews.
<a rel=”ugc” href=”https://example.com/user-post”>User Comment Link</a>
If certain users consistently post quality content, you might consider removing ugc for their links.
- rel=”nofollow”
Use this when you want to tell Google not to associate your site with the linked page, or you don’t want Google to crawl that link.
<a rel=”nofollow” href=”https://example.com/untrusted-link”>Untrusted Link</a>
For internal links you don’t want crawled, prefer using robots.txt disallow instead.
Using multiple rel values #
You can combine values by separating them with spaces or commas:
<a rel=”ugc nofollow” href=”https://example.com/some-link”>Example</a>
<a rel=”ugc,nofollow” href=”https://example.com/another-link”>Example 2</a>
Important notes: #
- Links with these rel values generally won’t be followed by Google (i.e., won’t pass PageRank).
- However, Google may still crawl those pages via other means (like sitemaps or other external links).
- These rel attributes apply only to links Googlebot can crawl.
- To block crawling of internal URLs, use robots.txt rules.
- To prevent indexing but allow crawling, use the noindex meta tag or HTTP header on the target page.