Google's Link Spam Update

Published: Tue, 09/21/21

What it means for you

I've had a lot of questions lately about Google's recent Link Spam Update.

As part of that update, Google also issued a "reminder" to webmasters asking that all affiliate links be marked as "sponsored" instead of the "nofollow" attribute that has been acceptable for affiliate links for years.

Without getting too technical here's what you need to know about this change:

Google's document on using rel attributes for affiliate links says "nofollow" IS STILL ACCEPTABLE - they would prefer, though, that we switch to "sponsored"

At a minimum, you should be applying the "nofollow" attribute to ALL of your affiliate and ad type links

Amazon does NOT include the "nofollow" attribute in the code they give you from the Amazon Associates Site Stripe tool (or most of their other link building tools)

You need to think about any of the other affiliate networks to which you link (Etsy, eBay, WarriorPlus, Clickbank, etc.)

I already know that I'm using "nofollow" on all of my affiliate links so I meet the minimum requirement and am not going to change to "sponsored" just yet - mostly due to a lack of time to clean up custom code on my multiple sites.

If you are looking to make this change, though, or aren't sure you have the "nofollow" tag in place properly there's a plugin that can help you handle the change.

WP Link Fixer

I have not used it but the creator has a good rating on all of his WordPress tools and several people on my list wrote to me about it. They've tried it and like it.

It allows you to manage the tags you assign to your affiliate links either globally across your website so you can make changes all at once or you can handle them at a page and post level.

I do not know if this works on links that are created by custom post types. You may have to change custom post type templates manually to add the "sponsored" tag if that's something you want to do.

If you have posts created with any of the themes I've provided that include custom post types those all have the "nofollow" tag applied.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Erica Stone

erica@extremereviewer.com