Sponsored link

Why paid links must be marked

Search engines count links as votes. A vote you can buy is not a vote, so Google's spam policies treat paid links that pass ranking credit as a link scheme. Sites caught selling followed links can lose their own rankings, and the sites that bought them can be hit too.

Marking a link sponsored keeps the arrangement honest. The advertiser still gets the visitors and the brand exposure, and nobody pretends the link was an editorial choice.

What counts as sponsored

Banner and text ads, sponsored posts, affiliate links, featured listings that were paid for, and links given in exchange for free products. If money or anything of value changed hands for the link, it is sponsored.

Some sites use nofollow for these instead. That is acceptable, but sponsored is more precise, and the two can be combined as rel="sponsored nofollow".

How Aback Launch uses it

Every ad and sponsor slot on Aback Launch is marked sponsored and labelled as an ad. Paid launch plans buy visibility and scheduling, never a dofollow link. The website link on a listing becomes dofollow only when our badge is verified on the founder's site, whatever the plan.

Disclosure for people, not only crawlers

The rel attribute is for machines. People need a visible label: "Ad", "Sponsored" or "Partner". Regulators such as the FTC in the United States expect paid placements and affiliate links to be clearly disclosed to readers. A link that is marked sponsored in code but presented as an editorial recommendation still misleads the reader.

Example

<a href="https://advertiser.com" rel="sponsored noopener">Advertiser</a> inside a box labelled "Sponsor".

Questions people ask

Can I buy a dofollow link on a launch platform?

You can find platforms that sell them, but a paid link that passes ranking credit breaks Google's spam policies. A platform that marks paid placements sponsored is protecting both itself and you.