Sponsored link

A link in an ad or paid placement, marked with rel="sponsored" in the page's code. It's the value Google prefers for paid links, though it still accepts nofollow.

Also called rel="sponsored".

Google asks site owners to mark links that are advertisements or paid placements, “commonly called paid links”, with the sponsored value of the link’s rel attribute (Google Search Central).

Google used to recommend nofollow for these links. It says nofollow is still an acceptable way to mark them, “though sponsored is preferred”.

Paid links and Google’s spam policies

Google says buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship is normal, and doesn’t break its spam policies as long as the links are marked with sponsored or nofollow. Its examples of link spam include text ads and text links that don’t block ranking credit, and paid articles whose links pass it (Google Search Central).

If you pay for a placement on another site, ask whether the link will be marked sponsored or nofollow, since Google counts buying links for ranking purposes as link spam.

Related terms

• Nofollow link
• Link spam

Tools for it

• Link building and backlink tools

Sources

• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links (Oct 8, 2026)
• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies (Oct 8, 2026)

Updated Oct 8, 2026.