How do I mark paid links with rel=sponsored?

Definition: rel="sponsored" is a value of the HTML link relationship attribute that identifies an advertisement or paid placement to Google. As of October 2026, Google prefers this value for paid links and also accepts rel="nofollow".

Key facts

• Google's outbound link qualification documentation places sponsored in the link's <a> element.
• Google's link spam policy includes exchanging goods or services for links among its examples of buying or selling links for ranking purposes.
• Google's announcement about link relationship values explicitly accepts rel="ugc sponsored" for a sponsored link in user-generated content.

Which links need paid qualification?

Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links primarily to manipulate search rankings. Examples include paying for a link or a post containing one, and sending a product in exchange for an article that includes a link. Payment can therefore take the form of goods or services as well as money.

The same policy allows buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship when the links carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". It also lists paid advertorials containing links that pass ranking credit among its examples of link spam.

For ordinary links that Google is expected to fetch and parse without qualification, its link qualification documentation says a rel attribute is unnecessary.

How is the attribute written and combined?

Google's link qualification documentation provides this paid-link example:

<a rel="sponsored" href="https://cheese.example.com/Appenzeller_cheese">Appenzeller</a>

The relationship value belongs on the individual link. Multiple values can share the same rel attribute, separated by spaces or commas. A paid link that also retains nofollow can use this form, adapted from Google's example:

<a rel="sponsored nofollow" href="https://cheese.example.com/Appenzeller_cheese">Appenzeller</a>

User-generated content means material contributed by users, such as comments and forum posts; Google recommends ugc for links within that content. Google's announcement explicitly accepts combining ugc with sponsored, and accepts using nofollow alongside the additional values. A sponsored link in a comment can therefore carry rel="ugc sponsored".

Does sponsored prevent crawling or indexing?

Google's qualification documentation says links carrying these attributes are generally not followed. The destination can still be found through a sitemap or another site's links and may still be crawled.

For a page on the same website, the documentation specifies a robots.txt disallow rule to prevent fetching. To prevent indexing, which means inclusion in Google's index, it specifies allowing crawling and applying the noindex robots rule. These link relationship values apply to crawlable <a> elements; nofollow is additionally available in a robots meta tag.

Related terms

• nofollow
• noindex
• robots.txt
• Meta robots

FAQ

Do I need to replace existing nofollow values on paid links?

Google's announcement says you can keep existing nofollow markup and systems that append it to new paid links. It recommends switching to sponsored when convenient.

Can I use ugc alone for a paid comment link?

Google's qualification documentation assigns ugc to user-generated links and prefers sponsored for paid placements. You can combine both values in rel="ugc sponsored" when both relationships apply.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Qualify your outbound links to Google", 10 December 2025
2. Google Search Central, "Spam policies for Google web search", 28 August 2026
3. Google Search Central, "Evolving nofollow: new ways to identify the nature of links", 10 September 2019

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