Google will be treating nofollow links differently

Google announced that it will not be treating the rel="nofollow" attribute as a signal any more, but as a hint. The background is that so many CMS’es are designating every link as nofollow.

They’re introducing two new hints: ugc for user generated content and sponsored for paid links.
For the UGC, they’re explicitly mentioning forums.

My opinion is that this is a big step forward, since the vast use of nofollow was killing the idea behind PageRank.

Full announcement here: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify.html

15개의 좋아요

Changing the code to use “nofollow ugc” seems like a fairly straightforward and safe thing for Discourse to do.

The above is my personal opinion and not necessarily that of Google, LLC

3개의 좋아요

It it valid to use both? Should it just be “ugc” now? I am unclear.

From that blog’s FAQ:

Can I use more than one rel value on a link?
Yes, you can use more than one rel value on a link. For example, rel=“ugc sponsored” is a perfectly valid attribute which hints that the link came from user-generated content and is sponsored. It’s also valid to use nofollow with the new attributes – such as rel=“nofollow ugc” – if you wish to be backwards-compatible with services that don’t support the new attributes.

3개의 좋아요

What “services” support nofollow other than Google?

2개의 좋아요

Baidu, Yandex supports nofollow

Bing, as a hint

https://twitter.com/facan/status/1171477716673032192

8개의 좋아요

Can you assign this @eviltrout? I assume it is a very very simple change, almost a copyedit?

4개의 좋아요

Hey @Roman this is probably an easy one, please take a look!

3개의 좋아요

We’re now using nofollow ugc:

https://review.discourse.org/t/feature-use-the-ugc-rel-attribute-alongside-nofollow/6173

Latest Onebox version is using it too:

https://review.discourse.org/t/feature-use-the-ugc-rel-attribute/6170

11개의 좋아요

On 2.6.0.beta2 I’m getting rel="nofollow noopener" with no ugc attribute for external links. Anyone else?

Edit: Looked for a recent link posted on meta. Seems that it’s also the case here: What is this line for in a Discourse forum's RSS feed? - #4 by Terrapop

Not seeing the ugc attribute either, will take a look.

3개의 좋아요

Fixed here:

https://review.discourse.org/t/fix-make-sure-rel-attributes-are-correctly-set-10645/15145

Links will correctly use nofollow ugc now.

3개의 좋아요