Sponsored, Nofollow and Dofollow: What Link Attributes Mean for You

Link attributes are small pieces of HTML that tell search engines about the relationship behind a link. They matter a lot when you buy placements, and they are one of the most widely misunderstood parts of link building — buyers routinely walk away from a good placement because it carries an attribute they think means the link is worthless. It doesn’t.

The attributes, explained

There are effectively four states a link can be in, and only one of them is unmarked:

Attribute	Meaning	Typical use
(none) — “followed”	A normal editorial link	Links a site chose to give without payment
rel=”sponsored”	The link was paid for or is part of an advertisement	Sponsored posts, affiliate links, ads
rel=”nofollow”	The site doesn’t want to formally vouch for the link	General-purpose “don’t endorse this”
rel=”ugc”	User-generated content	Comments, forum posts, reviews

Google introduced sponsored and ugc in 2019 and treats all three as hints rather than strict directives, meaning it can still choose to consider the link in some contexts. A site can also combine attributes, for example rel=”sponsored nofollow”, partly for compatibility with search engines that don’t recognise the newer values.

What Google actually asks for on paid links

Google’s spam policies say links that were bought or sold for ranking purposes should be qualified with rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”. Buying followed links specifically to manipulate rankings is listed as link spam in those same policies. That’s the rule, and it’s worth being clear-eyed about it rather than pretending it doesn’t exist or hoping nobody checks.

In practice, many publishers mark sponsored posts accordingly, some don’t, and enforcement is mostly algorithmic: Google aims to devalue links it identifies as manipulative rather than penalise every site involved in every case. Manual actions still happen, usually where the pattern is large, obvious and easy to trace back to a single buyer. See our guide to link penalties for what triggers those and how recovery works.

Is a sponsored or nofollow link wasted money?

No, if you bought the placement for the right reasons. A sponsored post on a relevant site with real readers still does several useful things:

• puts your brand and content in front of an audience you actually want to reach,
• can send referral traffic and leads directly, independent of any ranking effect,
• builds brand recognition that makes later outreach and coverage easier to earn,
• and, because the attributes are hints rather than hard rules, may still be weighed by search engines in some circumstances.

What a placement shouldn’t be is a purchase you’d regret if it passed zero ranking value at all. If the site has no real audience and no topical relevance to begin with, the rel attribute is the smallest of its problems — see our list of red flags for what actually makes a site not worth buying from, attribute aside.

How to check a link’s attributes yourself

1. Right-click the link on the live page and choose “Inspect” in your browser’s developer tools.
2. Look at the anchor tag’s markup for a rel value, and note exactly what it says.
3. Check the page’s robots meta tag as well. A page set to noindex won’t be counted by search engines however the link itself is marked.

Our live-post checklist covers this step alongside the other checks worth doing the moment a post goes up, including whether the anchor text matches what you agreed — see anchor text strategy for how to plan that in advance.

Attributes and disclosure aren’t the same thing

Marking a link sponsored is a technical signal to search engines. Disclosing that content is sponsored is a separate obligation to readers and, in many countries, to advertising regulators. A publisher can do one without the other, and buyers sometimes assume a marked link means disclosure is handled, which isn’t always true. If you’re publishing sponsored content yourself rather than just buying placements, read our disclosure rules guide as well.

Why some publishers resist marking links at all

A minority of publishers worry that adding a sponsored attribute makes a placement look less credible to readers, or that it will reduce whatever ranking value the link passes. Neither concern is a good reason to skip the attribute where it’s genuinely warranted: search engines are generally better at detecting undisclosed paid links than publishers assume, and getting caught doing that at scale is far more damaging to a site’s long-term visibility than simply marking the link correctly in the first place.

How Digital PR handles it

Each listing in the marketplace shows whether the publisher marks posts as sponsored, where they’ve told us, and you can filter listings for it before you order. We don’t treat either choice as a quality signal on its own: a relevant, well-read publication that labels sponsored content honestly is usually a better placement than a comparable one that doesn’t, because it tells you the publisher takes its own editorial standards seriously.

Where to go next

Before you order, it’s worth reading how to evaluate a guest post site so attributes are one line item in a bigger checklist rather than the only thing you check, and what drives guest post pricing to understand why two similarly attributed links can carry very different price tags.

Frequently asked questions