Everything Google Has Said On The Nofollow Link Attribute Change

Google announced a change to the nofollow link attribute yesterday and with that announcement, Googlers spent the next day responding to questions about it on Twitter. I will go through what changed according to the announcement and then cover almost all of the responses from Google (removing duplicates) so you get a full perspective of this change. Note, I did cover the announcement on Search Engine Land when this news broke.

Google has a nofollow link attribute that launched in 2005 with the goal of preventing comment spam. It then expanded to be used for any link you don't want Google to count and was then required to be used on any link that was added that could influence Google's search results that was paid for in some way.

Before yesterday, if you used the nofollow attribute on links, Google simply would ignore the link. It would not follow it, it would not count it, it would pretend that link did not exist. Google would not count the link, not follow it for crawling or indexing and Google would not use it for ranking.

Yesterday, with the change, Google said they will now use the nofollow link attribute as a "hint" for ranking purposes. Meaning, Google can see the content, anchor text, the link, use it for spam purposes, use it for ranking purposes, etc - if they deemed necessary. It is now just a hint to Google for ranking purposes and not an explicit directive. But for crawling and indexing, Google will still not follow the link for crawling and indexing purposes at this point in time.

After March 1, 2020, Google will expand that to be a hint also for crawling and indexing purposes.

In addition to this, Google added two more link attributes that can be used in combination with or by itself. In addition to the nofollow, you can use the rel="sponsored" and the rel="ugc". The rel="sponsored" can be used on all sponsored/paid links, you can use the nofollow and/or rel="sponsored" but you need to use one of those on all paid links - either or both is fine. The rel="ugc" is for user generated content, like links in comments, forum threads, etc. Google said you do not need to use the new attributes, you can continue to just use nofollow and not update the old nofollows, if you choose.

Cyrus Shepard has a nice chart of this change on Moz:

That is what changed - got it?

Now some important points summarized in bullet form:

Nofollow has changed to be a hint, a hint today for ranking, a hint in March 2020 for crawling and indexing

Rel=sponsored was added for more granular attribution of the type of link

Rel=ugc was added for more granular attribution of the type of link

You don't have to use those new attributes if you do not want to

You at least need to have nofollow on sponsored links, you can also just have rel="sponsored" on those links as well

No ranking changes expected, Google said, from this change.

You can combine these new link attributes if you want.

Google does not think this will result in more comment spam

In fact, I've already implemented it over here:

Now, let's get to the Google comments on Twitter.

The announcement:

Today, we’ve announced two new link attributes - “sponsored” and “ugc” - that join “nofollow” as ways to identify the nature of links. All will now work as hints about which links Google Search should consider or exclude for ranking purposes. More details:https://t.co/V6X2xjEC5L — Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) September 10, 2019

What is changing now vs later:

Blocking this way was never robust. If you didn't want pages indexed, putting blocks on links meant we wouldn't discover pages from *those particular links* but we still might index found it another way. You always wanted to have a page-specific block (robots.txt, meta robots). — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

Just using rel=sponsored is cool without nofollow for paid sponsored links:

If those are sponsored links, either sponsored or nofollow is acceptable. But yes, if the joke is "I'm finally dropping nofollow from them!," sure. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

No change needed, so no work is added?

You literally don't have to change anything if you don't want. The post is explicit about that: https://t.co/rMmSrUHaSQ pic.twitter.com/gQw1k6Rgda — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

You took time to ask a client if they would adopt something no one said you needed to do? Again, this is a voluntary outside of sponsored links. If people *want* to use more granular identification, those who *do want* can do so. If you don't, don't. https://t.co/rMmSrUHaSQ pic.twitter.com/hbNMgPaxtd — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

Focus on the other part: nofollow became a hint. Ugc and sponsored are icing on top of that cake, and it's one of those things where you don't have to do anything if you don't want to. If you want to help us understand the web better, implement them. If you don't want to, don't. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

Why should we change it then?

1) The two new attributes are voluntary choices for those who find it useful to be more granular. It's a *choice* and we don't need to put "teeth" into a choice. Use them. Don't. It's a choice.



2) Nofollow, as we explicitly said, continues to work for sponsored links. pic.twitter.com/q6YpTeE86y — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

Because you might find it useful to be more granular. People define CSS things in various ways for category and organization when they don't *have* to. It's kind of like that. We thought people might like more flavors than just nofollow. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

It's useful if you want a choice to be more granular. You didn't have that before. Now you do. If you want it. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

No. Nofollow was offered and voluntary used by sites as a spam deterrent, except for sponsored links. In that case, it is required by us. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

We spent a lot of time and care to ensure the new attributes were not presented as mandatory nor required changing off nofollow, precisely because we did not want webmasters to feel they didn't have a choice. They do; I believe we were very clear about this in the post. pic.twitter.com/InEZifN0r0 — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

When nofollow was introduced, it was for marking any link you didn't want to pass along credit to. Call that use case A. Then it became a way to block sponsored links in compliance with our guidelines. Call that use case B. For over a decade, a single attribute had to do both.... — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

As part of this review, it was also a good time to separate out the use cases. If you want to flag that something isn't a first-party link (use case A), now you have a specific option (UGC). If you want to flag something is a sponsored link (use case B), now you have sponsored... — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

However, we were also very very very very very very very super duper duper duper concerned that we didn't want to cause any new work for SEOs and others. We didn't want people to think they had to rip up nofollows, freak out that they *had* to use the new options.... — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

So why not force adoption? I guess in part, I'm scratching my head because usually SEOs are upset if they feel something is being forced upon them. We're not forcing adoptions because you don't force choice on people. That, by its nature, doesn't make it a choice.... — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

To conclude, we think some people might prefer to have granular attributes for particular link cases. We've provided these, for those who want that choice. But for those who don't want the choice, they can carry on using nofollow just as they have before. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

Google doesn't care if you use it or not?

We're not focused on driving adoption. Adopt the new attributes if you find them useful. If you prefer to use nofollow, do that. It's your choice. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

Nofollow was never a hint prior to yesterday, it was obeyed by Google:

But I think it would be better said like "Link attribution can be done in three ways: sponsored, UGC and nofollow." That kind of works well with the chart, too. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

No, not correct. I have first hand experience with that part of the codebase and that's just not true. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

Will this impact search? Google downplayed it when I talked to their PR and posted on Search Engine Land, but it might?

This has the potential to have a massive impact on the end user. While SEOs implement the nofollow, the outcomes of it trickle down to ranking, which directly affects end users. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

As I said elsewhere, the big thing is the change to use nofollow as a hint. As Gary says, that's very helpful to our systems that impact *lots* of people. The new attributes are a minor aspect. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

This change affects real users on a product i actually work on. This might be a shocker, but we get to launch things that have a positive effect on real users. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

The change went live yesterday (re hint for ranking with nofollow):

Since the announcement pretty much. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

How did Google decide to do this?

I think it's clear at this point you don't like that we introduced these two optional attributes. I'm sorry we'll have to disagree that some might find them useful. But you are free to ignore them. That's part of the whole choice thing in this. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

Any difference between nofollow or ugc link attribute?

So to your point, if someone feels a link should be seen as getting credit in our ranking systems, don't use any of the attributes (unless it's a sponsored link, where our guidelines require a blocking mechanism). — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

Look for other ways to block crawling and indexing soon:

But for people who absolutely, positively do not want a page indexed or crawled, nofollow on a link will no longer work for that. It just become a strong hint. But ... it never absolutely positively worked that way in the first place, as we also said in the post. pic.twitter.com/EqsLCQo0vN — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

What is UGC:

Comments could be seen as UGC. Forum links, as well. I mean, pretty much any place where you allow third-party users to add links to your content, that's user-generated content. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 10, 2019

There are no changes in how it impacts link spam:

Nothing changes there. — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 11, 2019

No changes to the normal No changes to the meta robots=noindex directive here:

No, this doesn't affect the robots meta tags. — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 11, 2019

How should affiliate links be handled?

Paid links (aka ads) are fine as long as they're disclosed with rel=nofollow or rel=sponsored. Affiliate links may also be there because of a monetary relationship, so that would apply there too (most of the time the bigger problem on affiliate sites is the content). — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 11, 2019

We don't say you need to specifically block affiliate links on our link schemes page https://t.co/MQ5Uhlz1kU nor on our page about affiliate content https://t.co/fxdoHhA2Qs so I think the "up to you" advice remains valid but again @JohnMu or @methode might say more. — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

Yeah I've seen these tweets about aff links but i don't quite know what the right answer is. I'll send you two and mr. linkspam an email. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

Google will continue to communicate about this:

We'll continue to give information about various aspects of search - the blog post isn't about us stopping to talk with folks :). — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 10, 2019

If you are unclear, John is willing to help you for presentations or whatever on this topic, reach out to him:

If you're presenting at Brighton SEO this week and the nofollow change is throwing you off, I'm happy to take some time to gut-check any last-minute slide changes. Ping me at gutcheck.with.john @ https://t.co/NMCGgUDBBO & point at specific pages/slides. — 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) September 11, 2019

Google spent a lot of time thinking about this:

hundreds of hours of consideration, months of preparation, we finally arrived. https://t.co/dhJJmdal4J — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 10, 2019

Mark et al, we've been working on this change for months. All these things you've raised have been discussed internally during that time, some things multiple times. The choices we've made were not made lightly, they were in fact made such to support the larger content ecosystem. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

Gary Illyes did a lot of laughing:

Fantastic. Now i have coffee in my nose. 🙄 — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 11, 2019

Danny Sullivan summarized more after I hit publish on this story:

Various SEOs: how does changing nofollow to a hint affect A, B, C?



Us at Google: as we said in our post, it won't change the nature of how we treat links in most cases.



Various SEOs: but D, E, F?



Us: Won't change the nature of....



Various SEOs: but GHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.... pic.twitter.com/RgMlxjKiOS — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

Of course, we well understood that there would be questions. That's why I, @methode, @JohnMu & others have been & will keep answering unique ones that seem helpful to clarify. That said, the post does cover much of what we've been asked. Really! https://t.co/rMmSrUYMhq — Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) September 11, 2019

And from Gary Illyes added later:

1. There's no meta robots ugc and sponsored, it won't do anything if you add that.

2. Meta robots nofollow is a hint now, like rel-nofollow.

3. I'll update the docs tonight to say this explicitly. — Gary "鯨理" Illyes (@methode) September 12, 2019

I think that is most of the Google communication around this change at the time I hit publish. I hope I did not miss anything significant:

Forum discussion at Twitter.