According to Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller, using affiliate links without the recommended markup will not result in a manual penalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was stated during the December 10 Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A question is submitted in which it is asked if a website will be penalized for failing to mark affiliate links with the rel=”sponsored”<\/strong> or rel=”nofollow”<\/strong> attributes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a nutshell, Mueller says, “Probably not.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Continue reading the section below for his complete response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be sure, using the rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attributes on affiliate links is a strongly recommended best practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, there’s no need to worry if you have affiliate links on your site that don’t use the recommended markup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mueller states:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, from our point of view, affiliate links fall into that category of something financial attached to the links, so we really strongly recommend to use this setup.<\/p> But, for the most part, if it doesn\u2019t come across as you selling links, then it\u2019s not going to be the case that we would manually penalize a website for having affiliate links and not marking them up.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n If that sounds confusing, the key takeaway is that when publishing affiliate links, you should use either the rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attributes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google recommends it, so you won’t go wrong if you take their advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mueller is implying that Google will not go so far as to levy a manual penalty if this best practice is not followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his next statement, Mueller confirms this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut it is a best practice and I strongly recommend doing that, but it\u2019s not something where I\u2019d say we will go off and manually take action on these sites.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This is generally consistent with Google’s previous recommendations for affiliate links.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When a link is associated with financial compensation, whether it’s linking to an advertiser or linking to a product from which you earn a commission, the link should be declared with an attribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In these cases, Google recommends using the sponsored attribute, but the nofollow attribute is also acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By tagging affiliate links, you prevent your site from passing link equity to the other site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is an important SEO best practice because you should never pass link equity to sites that pay you to link to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’re linking to a page because you believe it will be useful to your visitors and you’re not getting anything in return, you don’t need to declare it with markup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As long as you’re making a genuine recommendation, you can even link to products and services without using an attribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, selling links, regardless of the attributes attached to them, is never acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To hear Mueller\u2019s full response, see the video below:<\/p>\n\n\n\nJohn Mueller of Google Discusses Manual Penalties For Affiliate Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What Is the Importance of Using These Attributes?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n