A normal editorial link usually needs no special rel value
When you link naturally to a useful source that you trust, a normal HTML link is enough:
<a href="https://www.example.com/guide">Useful guide</a>Use special link qualifications when the relationship between your page and the destination needs to be explained to search engines.
Choose the rel value based on why the link exists
| Value | Use it for | Example |
|---|---|---|
sponsored | Advertisements, paid placements, sponsorships and other compensated links | Affiliate or paid promotional link |
ugc | User-generated content such as comments and forum posts | A link posted by a forum member |
nofollow | When the other values do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your page | An untrusted reference you still need to mention |
Use rel="sponsored" for advertisements and paid placements
<a
href="https://advertiser.example/product"
rel="sponsored">Sponsored product</a>
Google says nofollow is still acceptable for these links, but sponsored is the preferred value when the link exists because of payment or sponsorship.
Use rel="ugc" for comment and forum links
<a
href="https://member.example/resource"
rel="ugc">User-posted resource</a>Automatically qualifying links added through comments, profiles or forums can reduce incentives for link spam and clearly identifies that the publisher did not create the linked content.
Use rel="nofollow" when the more specific values do not fit
<a
href="https://example.com/untrusted-reference"
rel="nofollow">Reference</a>This is different from the older idea that every external link should be nofollowed simply to “keep PageRank.” Useful editorial links can help users understand a topic and verify claims.
Google's current documentation says links carrying these attributes will generally not be followed, but the destination can still be discovered through other routes such as sitemaps or links from other sites.
rel values can be combined
<a
href="https://member.example/link"
rel="ugc nofollow">User link</a>Combining values is useful when more than one relationship needs to be expressed.
Do not use nofollow as an internal PageRank-sculpting technique
The old version of this article suggested using nofollow on internal links such as Contact or Disclaimer pages to conserve “link juice.” That is not a good modern internal-linking strategy.
Internal links should normally remain crawlable and should help users move through related content. Use descriptive anchor text and link useful related pages naturally. Our pillar page and topic cluster guide explains how to organize those relationships.
If you truly need to prevent Google from fetching an internal URL, use the appropriate crawl-control mechanism.
If you need a crawlable page excluded from search results, use a supported noindex directive instead.
nofollow on a link does not mean the destination cannot be indexed
A page may be discovered through other links, sitemaps or other sources. If the objective is to keep your own page out of search results, use the correct indexing control rather than trying to achieve it through inbound nofollow links.
See Index, Noindex, Canonical or Sitemap? for the correct mechanism by situation.
Output a qualified link from PHP
echo "<a href='https://advertiser.example/' rel='sponsored'>Visit advertiser</a>";Because the entire link is inside the PHP string, there is no PHP variable interpolation to worry about in this example. When displaying PHP code to learners from inside another PHP string, remember to escape literal variables so the tutorial renders them correctly.
Qualify the relationship, not every outbound link
Use sponsored for paid links, ugc for user-generated links and nofollow when the other values do not apply and you do not want the normal association.
Keep normal editorial and internal links normal when they are useful and trustworthy.
