Hint vs. ignore. Google said each of these methods will be considered “hints” about how to treat the links rather than an instruction to ignore the links. The company said it is making the change because it can now collect data on the individual links, including the words within anchor text, and evaluate links in aggregate to better identify link schemes while still considering the link attribute signals.
“Links contain valuable information that can help us improve search, such as how the words within links describe content they point at,” Google said. “Looking at all the links we encounter can also help us better understand unnatural linking patterns. By shifting to a hint model, we no longer lose this important information, while still allowing site owners to indicate that some links shouldn’t be given the weight of a first-party endorsement.”
Will the search results change? Google told us that it does not expect significant changes to the search results as of a result to this. However, Google is now able to begin looking at how to use this data in its search ranking systems and changing to the hint treatment will give Google more flexibility in how it treats links with these attributes in search.
“All the link attributes — sponsored, UGC and nofollow — are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search,” said Google.
No change needed. There is no need to change your nofollow links today, the company said. You can leave nofollow attributes in your UGC or sponsored links. “There’s absolutely no need to change any nofollow links that you already have,” however Google added, for sponsored content it “recommends switching over to rel="sponsored" if or when it is convenient.”
Multiple link attributes supported. You can use a combination of one or more of these attributes in a single link tag. You can tag a single link with rel="ugc sponsored" or rel="nofollow ugc". The first would hint to Google that the link came from user-generated content and is sponsored.
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