rel="sponsored" or nofollow for affiliate links

Mark offer and affiliate links with rel="sponsored". Google introduced the value on 10 September 2019 for links that come from advertising, sponsorship or other compensation, and it still prefers it for paid links. rel="nofollow" remains acceptable for the same links, and you can use both together. What is not fine is a paid link with neither: Google’s link spam policy allows paid links only when they carry nofollow or sponsored.

The three values

From Google’s page on qualifying outbound links, read on 4 November 2026:

• sponsored for advertisements and paid placements.
• ugc for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts.
• nofollow when no other value fits and you do not want Google to associate your site with the linked page.

Values can be combined, separated by spaces or commas, for example rel="sponsored nofollow".

Is an affiliate link “sponsored”?

An affiliate link pays you when the visitor buys, so it is a link that exists because of compensation. The September 2019 announcement describes sponsored as the value for links created as part of “advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements”. The link spam policy is the hard line: buying or selling links for ranking is spam, and paid links are fine as long as they are qualified with nofollow or sponsored.

Do old nofollow links have to change?

No. The 2019 post says existing nofollow on paid links does not need to change, though switching to sponsored is recommended when convenient. It also changed how Google reads all three values: they are hints for ranking, and since 1 March 2020 nofollow is a hint for crawling and indexing too. If you used nofollow to keep a page out of the index, use a stronger method.

Marking a whole portfolio

On one site, a template change does it. On a portfolio of offer sites, links come from many places: article bodies, offer cards, comparison tables, buttons. The safe pattern is to send every offer link through one redirect path of your own and qualify that path everywhere:

1. One way out. Every offer link goes through your own path, such as /go/..., never straight to the landing.
2. One rule for that path. Every link to it carries rel="sponsored", wherever it appears.
3. Same for everyone. People and bots get the same link and the same destination. Different targets for bots is cloaking.
4. Check it before publishing. A direct link to a landing is a mistake worth blocking.

How Grove does it

In DarkCore Grove offer links on the sites always go through Grove’s own /go/ path and carry rel="sponsored nofollow". The Stream behind that path decides where the click goes, and bots are sent to the same place as people. The technical SEO Gate blocks an article with a direct link to a landing. See seven Gates.