John Mueller, Google’s search advocate, said that websites will not be manually penalized for using affiliate links without a recommendation mark.
This was stated in a Google Search Center SEO office hour hangout recorded on December 10.
Submitted a question asking if the site will not mark affiliate links as rel=”Sponsorship” or rel=”nofollow” Attributes.
In short, Mueller said: “Probably not.”
For his complete answer, please continue reading the following sections.
Google’s John Mueller’s manual penalties for affiliate links
To be sure, the best practice of using rel=”sponsor” or rel=”nofollow” attributes on affiliate links is strongly recommended.
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However, if there are affiliate links on your website that are not recommended tags, there is no reason for insomnia.
Mueller said:
“Therefore, from our perspective, affiliate links are financial content related to the link, so we strongly recommend this setting.
However, in most cases, if you do not encounter this situation when selling links, then we will not manually penalize the site because it has affiliate links without marking them. “
If this sounds confusing-the key point here is you should When posting affiliate links, use the rel=”sponsor” or rel=”nofollow” attribute.
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Google recommends it, so you won’t make mistakes by following this advice.
What Mueller is saying here is that if this best practice is not followed, Google will not issue manual penalties.
Mueller said the same thing in his next statement:
“But this is a best practice, and I strongly recommend it, but I won’t say that we will take action manually on these sites.”
This is usually consistent with Google’s past guidelines regarding affiliate links.
When the link is financially compensated, whether it is a link to an advertiser or a link to a product from which you earn commissions, the attribute declaration link should be used.
Google Sponsored attributes are recommended In these cases, the nofollow attribute is also acceptable.
Why is it important to use these attributes?
Marking affiliate links can prevent your website from passing linked assets to other websites.
This is an important SEO best practice, because you should never pass on link rights to sites that motivate you to link to them.
If you link to a page because you think it provides value to visitors, and you have not received any return, then there is no need to declare them with tags.
As long as you provide real recommendations, you can even link to products and services without using attributes.
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it is no way However, regardless of the attributes attached to the link, the sale link can be accepted.
For more information on when link attributes should and should not be used, see this interpreter:
To hear Mueller’s full response, please watch the video below:
Featured image: Taken from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, December 2021.
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