The most recent announcement from the search engine has shaken the SEO world and it is that Google will change the way it tracks nofollow links . That is, the way in which these links will count for their ranking will now be different. At Posicionamiento Web Salamanca we will tell you all the details about this topic, learn what to do and how it will affect you.
What are nofollow links?
Nofollow is an HTML attribute that is added to links. It basically tells Google that a link is not trustworthy. It was originally designed to combat spam comments on blogs.
This type of link evolved and began to be used in advertising, in links to user-generated content. In other words, nofollow was used for completely trustworthy sites.
Nofollow links are those that have the rel=”nofollow” tag in the HTML code. What that tells cambodia telegram data engines is to ignore the link, not to pass the PageRank, therefore, they do not impact the ranking.
Originally nofollow links do not pass link juice. That is why dofollow links are preferred in link building.
These are the basics. But Google published a post on its Webmasters blog this week about Nofollow and new ways of identifying the nature of links , which changed the idea of this type of links a little.
Google recalled in this post that they created this attribute 15 years ago, with the intention of fighting spam. And that they recommended it as a method for links related to advertising or sponsorship. That was in 2005 and we already know that the Internet and SEO have changed a lot from that time until now.
Two new link attributes
In the post we mentioned earlier, Google announced that they will be creating two new link attributes. This “is to give webmasters additional ways to identify the nature of particular links for Google Search. They are as follows:
rel=”sponsored” : This attribute will be used to identify links within your website created as advertising, sponsorships or other types of compensation agreements.
rel=”ugc” – These acronyms refer to user-generated content, they recommend using this attribute for links to that type of content, such as comments on blogs and forums.
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And remember the use of nofollow:
rel=”nofollow” – This is used for cases where you want to link to a page, but you don’t want that to imply any kind of recommendation or passing of credit to that other site.
Each of these three attributes will be taken as clues about which links to exclude as ranking signals. That is, they will not be ignored.
These new attributes help Google with link analysis. For example, “sponsored” links tell Google that they should not miss any PageRank. They also help the search engine to better understand a website.
While UGC will give Google clues that it may be more useful than a regular nofollow, in this case the search engine may pass ranking signals for UGC links from a forum.
Google will change the way it tracks nofollow links
The search engine explains that since they started using nofollow links, links marked with this attribute were not counted as a signal by Google's algorithms. But the main news is that this is going to change.
From now on, all link attributes, both nofollow and the two new ones, will be taken as clues about which links to consider or exclude from the search .
They say that “we will use these clues – along with other signals – as a way to better understand how to properly analyze and use the links in our systems.”
The reason they give for not continuing to ignore these links is that they contain information that can help them improve searches. Links, for example, can tell Google how words describe the content they point to.
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By viewing all the links, the search engine also wants to better understand what unnatural link patterns look like.
That is, Google will take into account all the links, analyze them to better understand how they work and how they are used. Although as a website owner you can also tell them which ones have more weight or importance than others.