Nofollow Sponsored
The rel="sponsored" attribute marks any link that is paid, affiliate or otherwise commercial in nature. Google introduced it back in 2019 alongside rel="ugc" so that publishers could distinguish commercial links from editorial ones, rather than lumping everything together under nofollow.
Why it matters for your rankings
Marking paid links correctly is not optional. Selling links that pass ranking credit is an explicit guidelines violation, and it puts the publisher at risk as much as the buyer.
The attribute exists because the old binary was too crude. Publishers had one signal for spam comments, paid placements and untrusted user content alike. Now Google can distinguish an affiliate link from a forum post from a spam comment, and treats each accordingly. For any site running affiliate content or sponsored posts, applying it correctly is basic compliance work, and its absence is one of the first things a competitor filing a spam report will point at.
How to check it on your site
Audit affiliate and sponsored links
Crawl your outbound links and confirm every commercial destination carries rel="sponsored", since one unmarked paid link is enough to draw scrutiny.
Check your plugins apply it
Affiliate link management plugins vary in what attributes they add. Inspect the rendered HTML rather than trusting settings.
Mark user-generated links as ugc
Comment and forum links should carry rel="ugc" so Google can judge them appropriately.
Review sponsored content templates
Any template used for paid placements should apply the attribute automatically rather than relying on an editor remembering.