Stay organized with collections
Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
Qualify your outbound links to Google
For certain links on your site, you might want to tell Google your relationship with the
linked page. In order to do that, use one of the following rel
attribute values in the <a> tag.
For regular links that you expect Google to fetch and parse without any qualifications, you don't need
to add a rel attribute. For example:
<p>My favorite horse is the <a href="https://horses.example.com/Palomino">palomino</a>.</p>
For other links, use one or more of the following values:
rel values
rel="sponsored"
Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid
links) with the sponsored value. Read more about Google's stance on paid links.
If you want to recognize and reward trustworthy contributors, you might remove this
attribute from links posted by members or users who have consistently made
high-quality contributions over time. Read more about how to
prevent user-generated spam your site and platform.
rel="nofollow"
Use the nofollow value when other values don't apply, and you'd rather
Google not associate your site with, or crawl the linked page from, your site. For
links within your own site, use the
robots.txt disallow rule.
You may specify multiple rel values as a space- or comma-separated
list. Examples:
<p>I love <a rel="ugc nofollow" href="https://cheese.example.com/Appenzeller_cheese">Appenzeller</a> cheese.</p>
<p>I hate <a rel="ugc,nofollow" href="https://cheese.example.com/blue_cheese">Blue</a> cheese.</p>
Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed. Remember
that the linked pages may be found through other means, such as sitemaps or links from other
sites, and thus they may still be crawled. These rel attributes are used only in
<a> elements that Google can crawl,
except nofollow, which is also available as
robots meta tag.
If you need to prevent Google from fetching a link to a page on your own site, use the
robots.txt disallow rule.
To prevent Google from indexing a page, allow crawling and use the
noindex robots rule.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-02-04 UTC."],[[["Use `rel` attributes in `\u003ca\u003e` tags to specify your relationship with outbound links, guiding how Google interacts with them."],["The `sponsored` attribute should be used for paid or advertisement links, while `ugc` is designated for user-generated content."],["Employ the `nofollow` attribute when you prefer Google to not associate or crawl a linked page from your site, especially when other attributes are not applicable."],["Multiple `rel` attribute values can be used for the same link by separating them with spaces or commas."],["Google might still find and crawl the linked pages even with these attributes through other sources like sitemaps."]]],["To manage how Google interacts with outbound links, use `rel` attributes within `\u003ca\u003e` tags. `rel=\"sponsored\"` marks paid links; `rel=\"ugc\"` designates user-generated content. `rel=\"nofollow\"` signals that Google should not associate your site with the linked page or crawl it. Multiple `rel` values can be used together. Links with these attributes generally won't be followed, but can still be found through other sources. For links on your site, use the `robots.txt disallow` rule.\n"]]
