What is the sponsored link attribute?
The sponsored link attribute is a value added to a link's rel attribute in HTML, rel="sponsored", that declares the link was paid for. Google introduced it in 2019 alongside rel="ugc" for user-generated content, as a more specific alternative to the older rel="nofollow", which had been the catch-all for any link a site did not want to vouch for. A sponsored link might be an affiliate link, a paid placement in an article, a sponsored post, an advertorial or a link in a banner sold to an advertiser.
The attribute does not stop the link working for people. A reader clicks it and arrives as normal. It only changes what the search engine does: a sponsored link is treated as a hint not to pass ranking credit, and as a disclosure that the site is being honest about the commercial arrangement.
Why it matters
Why the sponsored attribute matters
Paid links that pass ranking credit are against Google's guidelines, and have been for most of the company's history, because they let money substitute for merit. A site that sells links without marking them risks a manual penalty on the pages involved, and the site buying them risks worse. The sponsored attribute is the agreed way to run a commercial link honestly: the advertiser gets the traffic and the exposure, the publisher gets paid, and the search engine knows not to read the link as a vote.
It also protects the publisher's own reputation. A site whose outbound links are all editorial has a cleaner profile than one where paid and earned links are indistinguishable, and search engines weigh outbound linking patterns when deciding how much to trust a domain.
In practice
How the sponsored attribute works in practice
- 01
Any link that exists because money or goods changed hands gets the attribute: affiliate links, paid reviews, sponsored content, advertorials, links in exchange for a free product. The attribute can be combined with others, so rel="sponsored nofollow" is valid and common on sites that want to cover older search engines that only understand nofollow. Links that are editorial, where the writer chose to link because the destination was useful, are left plain.
- 02
Most publishing platforms let editors mark a link as sponsored from the link dialog, and affiliate plugins add it automatically. The work is mainly policy: a written rule about which links are commercial, an audit now and then to catch the ones that slipped through, and a conversation with sponsors who ask for a plain link, which is a request to break the guidelines on their behalf.
Watch out
What people get wrong about the sponsored attribute
Using it on everything. Marking every outbound link as sponsored or nofollow out of caution tells search engines the site never vouches for anything, which is its own kind of signal. The other mistake is leaving it off because the sponsor insisted; the publisher carries the risk, not the sponsor. And people confuse it with disclosure to readers. The attribute is for machines. Readers still need the words "sponsored" or "ad" where they can see them.
