John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, says that websites don’t get manual penalties for using affiliate links without endorsement markup.
This was mentioned in a Google Search Central SEO office hours hangout recorded on December 10th.
A question is sent asking whether the website will be penalized for not marking up affiliate links on rel=”sponsor” Also rel=”no follow” attribute.
In short, Mueller says “probably not.”
Continue reading the section below for his full answer.
Google’s John Mueller on Manual Penalties for Affiliate Links
Indeed, we highly recommend using the rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attribute on your affiliate links.
However, if your site has affiliate links without recommended markup, there’s no reason not to sleep.
Muller said:
“Therefore, from our point of view, affiliate links fall into the category of financial things attached to links, and we highly recommend using this setting.
But most of the time, I wouldn’t manually penalize a website with affiliate links and no markup if they don’t think they’re selling links. ”
If that seems confusing, the important thing here is to should do it Use the rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” attribute when publishing affiliate links.
Recommended by Google, you can’t go wrong by following their advice.
What Mueller is saying here is that Google will not go so far as to issue a manual penalty if this best practice is not followed.
Mueller made a similar statement in the following statement:
“However, while this is a best practice and we strongly encourage you to do so, we cannot say that you would take manual action against these sites.”
This is generally consistent with guidance Google has provided in the past regarding affiliate links.
If a link has a financial reward associated with it, whether it is to an advertiser or to a product that earns commissions, the link must be declared with an attribute.
Google recommends using the Sponsored attribute in these cases, but you can also use the nofollow attribute.
Why is it important to use these attributes
Marking up affiliate links prevents sites from passing link equity to other sites.
This is an important SEO best practice. This is because you should not pass link equity to the site promoting the link.
If you’re linking to a page because you believe it provides value to your visitors and you’re not receiving anything in return, you don’t need to declare them in your markup.
You can also link to products and services without using attribution, as long as you provide genuine recommendations.
this is I never have However, links may be sold regardless of any attributes attached to the link.
See the discussion below for more information on when link attributes should and should not be used.
To hear Mueller’s full response, see the video below.
Featured image: Screenshot from YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral, December 2021.
