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Nofollow UGC Sponsored SEOFromHome Patrick Stox Ahrefs
The document discusses the history and evolution of the 'nofollow' attribute in SEO, detailing its initial purpose to combat comment spam and the subsequent developments with new attributes like 'sponsored' and 'ugc.' It highlights how Google has adapted to changes in link building practices and the reactions of SEO professionals to these updates. The adoption rates and implications of using these attributes, as well as their effects on crawling and indexing, are also examined.
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Nofollow UGC Sponsored SEOFromHome Patrick Stox Ahrefs
- 1. @patrickstox NOFOLLOW AND UGCAND SPONSORED OH MY
- 2. @patrickstox Product Advisor, TechnicalSEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs • I write for Ahrefs blog but have written for many industry publications in the past • I speak at some conferences like SMX, Pubcon, UnGagged, TechSEO Boost • Organizer for the Raleigh SEO Meetup (most successful in US) and the Beer & SEO Meetup • We also run a conference, the Raleigh SEO Conference • Founder Technical SEO Slack Group (message me for an invite) • Moderator /r/TechSEO on Reddit Who is Patrick Stox?
- 3. @patrickstox A Brief Historyof Nofollow With The Plot of Some Book/Movie
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- 6. @patrickstox Google Landed InThe Fight
- 7. @patrickstox Everyone wanted Google’sPageRank PageRank
- 8. @patrickstox The Quest: Add NofollowAttributes
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- 10. @patrickstox https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/preventing- comment-spam.html Originally to combatcomment spam <a rel="nofollow“ href=“http://abc.com”>don’t trust</a> Story 408: Nofollow
- 11. @patrickstox • Brad Fitzpatrick- LiveJournal Dave Winer - Scripting News Anil Dash - Six Apart Steve Jenson - Blogger Matt Mullenweg - WordPress Stewart Butterfield - Flickr Anthony Batt - Buzznet David Czarnecki - blojsom Rael Dornfest - Blosxom Mike Torres - MSN Spaces Platforms Helped Them
- 12. @patrickstox • Ross Rader- Blogware John Panzer - AOL Journals Kevin Marks - of Technorati also added a draft formal spec for nofollow. Reini Urban - PhpWiki David Gorman - ModBlog Arnab Nandi - Drupal James Tauber - Leonardo Jeremie Bouillon - points out a GPL plugin for Textpattern Simon Brown - Pebble Ilkka Huotari - Netdoc Shaun Inman - ShortStat Eaden McKee - bBlog Yariv Habot - backBlog John Lyons - enetation Steven Roussey - Network54 Will Yardley - Dreambook Samuel Klingen Daams - Travellerspoint Even More Platforms Helped Them
- 13. @patrickstox SEOs The Journey WasFraught With Peril
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- 15. @patrickstox Spammed Article Sites,Directories, Press Releases, Forum Links and Forum Profile Links
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- 18. @patrickstox Web 2.0 LinksAnd Tiered Linkbuilding
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- 20. @patrickstox https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2011/05/more- guidance-on-building-high-quality.html More guidance onbuilding high-quality sites (EAT) Story 408: Recommended Reading
- 21. @patrickstox Some Wizard GuySort Of Helped Everyone
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- 23. @patrickstox You Either DieA Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain
- 24. @patrickstox Businesses Shut Down, SEOsFeared Google
- 25. @patrickstox Links sellers, spam,and fear of penalties pushed many sites to nofollow all links. Many Sites Over-Reacted: Sitewide Nofollow
- 26. @patrickstox I’m not goingto name names, but this happened in many niches and many countries. There were lots of weird Penguin recovery strategies too. In Some Cases Nofollowing Outbound Links Became A Recommended Strategy
- 27. @patrickstox Others Continued InDifferent Ways
- 28. @patrickstox Redirecting Expired DomainsOr Building On Them
- 29. @patrickstox It was popularespecially among affiliates to route through a path that was blocked from crawling or use JavaScript. Hidden Links
- 30. @patrickstox PBNs (Private BlogNetworks)
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- 32. @patrickstox Google Now PenalizingSubdomains Leasing, Not Just Subfolder Leasing https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalizing- subdomains-leasing-28203.html Subdomain Leasing
- 33. @patrickstox Some Still ClingTo The Old Ways
- 34. @patrickstox Penguin no longerpenalizes, it just ignores bad links https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core.html They were already ignoring signals from many links like affiliate links which they recommended people nofollow Softer, Gentler Google
- 35. @patrickstox https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving- nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html <a rel=“sponsored” href=“http://abc.com”>Ibought</a> <a rel=“ugc” href=“http://abc.com”>It wasn’t me</a> New Attributes Sponsored And UGC
- 36. @patrickstox rel=“sponsored” Mark links thatare advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) as sponsored. Sponsored
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- 38. @patrickstox rel=“ugc” We recommend markinguser-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts, as ugc. UGC
- 39. @patrickstox Within A Day,Barry Already Used The New Attributes
- 40. @patrickstox Ahrefs Added SupportIn Less Than 2 Days
- 41. @patrickstox • Completely Ignored •Was not used for crawling • Did not pass signals Nofollow Before For Google
- 42. @patrickstox • PageRank • AnchorText • Surrounding Text • ??? What Are Signals
- 43. @patrickstox Treated as hintsfor Ranking Same with Sponsored and UGC Nofollow Now
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- 45. @patrickstox Is treated asa hint for crawling and indexing Since March 1, 2020 Nofollow
- 46. @patrickstox Anchor text likelygreater signal gain than PageRank The crawling and indexing part is even more important Likely used for better spam identification Range of values passed. Full, partial, none Signals Speculation
- 47. @patrickstox I need arel=“meh” that passes partial signals. ***this is not a thing What About Something For Those Of Us That Can’t Decide
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- 51. @patrickstox It had becomea common practice to nofollow all external links. Wikipedia - 2007 News sites – Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, CNN, NFL Many sites in certain countries Why Did They Change Nofollow?
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- 53. @patrickstox https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc/status/1181607939280257024 Kind Google: YouDon’t Have To Change Anything
- 54. @patrickstox https://twitter.com/jenstar/status/1181607554725474304 Kind Google: YouDon’t Have To Change Anything
- 55. @patrickstox We Looked AtThe Top 110k Sites By Ahrefs Rank *Data from February 2020 https://ahrefs.com/blog/nofollow-ugc-sponsored/
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- 61. @patrickstox Websites are adoptingugc and sponsored Websites are likely overusing nofollow on external and internal links
- 62. @patrickstox https://twitter.com/facan/status/1171477716673032192 Like Before, PartnersWill Help Drive Adoption Bing
- 63. @patrickstox Like Before, PartnersWill Help Drive Adoption We looked at the CMS used on 7,130 of the sites
- 64. @patrickstox Added ugc in5.3 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-rel-nofollow- ugc/329109/ WordPress
- 65. @patrickstox Without any incentivesor penalties, adoption will likely be slow This Might Take A While
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- 68. @patrickstox What Else ShouldYou Know
- 69. @patrickstox rel=“nofollow ugc” –forum comments, blog comments rel=“ugc sponsored” – advertorials, paid guest posts You Can Use More Than One Attribute
- 70. @patrickstox According to theHTML spec, they should use a space to separate. Google will handle spaces, commas, and other punctuation. Rel Attributes Are Parsed With Flexible Standards
- 71. @patrickstox You can’t usethese new attributes at a page level like you could with nofollow. They apply as attributes on specific links. <a rel=“nofollow,ugc,sponsored” href=“https://abc.com”>attributes can be added here</a> & <link rel=“alternate nofollow ugc” Not Here: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow,ugc,sponsored"/> Tip: Don’t Confuse Link Attribute & Meta Robots
- 72. @patrickstox Delete Password Protection Noindex (butnot in robots.txt) https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062602 Don’t Use Nofollow To Block Pages From Being Indexed
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