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SEO Madmanby Adam Hafez
Free tool

Link rel attribute auditor: sponsored, ugc, nofollow

Audit the links in pasted HTML against Google's rel qualifiers: sponsored for paid links, ugc for user content and nofollow when neither applies.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored.

Nothing you paste here is sent anywhere; it is read in your browser only.

    Key takeaways

    • Google documents three link qualifiers, sponsored, ugc and nofollow, and links carrying them will generally not be followed.
    • Google asks for rel="sponsored" on advertisements and paid placements, and no longer recommends nofollow alone for paid links.
    • Links in comments, forum posts and other user-generated content should carry rel="ugc" according to Google.
    • Several rel values can share one attribute, separated by spaces or commas, so ugc nofollow and ugc,nofollow are both accepted.
    • Values such as noopener and noreferrer are valid HTML but are not Google link qualifiers, so they do not mark a link as paid or user-generated.

    What it takes

    • The HTML containing the links to audit
    • Your own domain, so internal links can be told apart
    • The kind of content the links sit in

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    How to use it

    1. 1Enter your domainLinks to this domain and its subdomains count as internal and need no qualifier. Anything else counts as external.
    2. 2Pick the content typeChoose editorial, user-generated, or advertising. HTML alone cannot show whether a link is paid or came from a commenter, so you supply that one fact.
    3. 3Paste the HTMLAny markup works. The tool reads every anchor tag that has an href, and skips fragment, mailto, tel and javascript links.
    4. 4Fix the warningsA warning means an external link is missing the qualifier Google asks for in that context, or carries a rel value Google does not document.
    5. 5Review the informational linesThose flag a qualifier that is accepted but not the most specific one, or one that fits only if the link really is paid or user-submitted.

    Outbound links carry an implied vote, and Google gives site owners three ways to say that a link is not an editorial one. This tool checks whether the links in a block of HTML use them consistently. It runs in your browser and sends nothing anywhere, so you can paste real page markup or a comment template without it leaving your machine.

    Why the content type is an input

    Whether a link should be marked depends on how it got onto the page, and HTML does not record that. A link a commenter typed and a link an advertiser paid for can look identical in markup, so the tool asks. Google’s guidance maps each situation to a value: paid or advertising links get sponsored, links in user-generated content get ugc, and nofollow is the general fallback when neither describes the link and you would rather not be associated with it.

    What the audit does not decide

    The tool cannot know whether an editorial link is paid, so it never accuses one. It reports a missing qualifier only inside a context you have declared as paid or user-generated, and it treats a qualifier on editorial content as something to confirm rather than an error. It also does not fetch the pages you link to, so it says nothing about the quality of the destination.

    Sources

    1. 1.Qualify your outbound links to Google - Google Search CentralPrimary
    2. 2.HTML Standard: link types - WHATWG
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