On 16 September 2019, Google Annouced rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugs” and well as some changes for rel=”nofollow” in the future.
Sponsored is supposed to be for paid links. They have similar value to nofollows to my knowledge and you can potentially be penalised for not using them.
UGS stands for User Generated Content, and is stuff like comments, forums, article submission sites, web 2,0 sites, and similar sites. It seems similar to sponsored, but we are still waiting for effects.
Nofollow links will now have more potential to rank and get your site indexed. This change will start in March of 2020 CE. In the past they were suppose to not have much if any effect on your ranking (mostly the latter), but now the “may” have effect on your rankings and indexing (they were used to an extent to stop indexing of a site). This has negative effects on some SPAMY strategies like Guerilla Satellites. You may also be able to switch rels for your spam (to mix it up), but they will still have similar effect.
It is still kind of unclear, but it does not seem site owners need to implement these new rels on their sites.
Over here at Asbestosstar we will not use these new rels. On default all likes will be dofollow. Down with these changes! They suck for seo.
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