Authority and distribution · Branch A.A, Editorial authority and links
A-02 Paid, UGC and untrusted outbound links must be qualified correctly
Sponsor and affiliate links must be marked sponsored, user-generated links must be marked ugc, and untrusted links where needed must be marked nofollow.
- Scope
- All public content
- Priority
- High priority.
- Quality bucket
- Authority and distribution readiness
- Legacy coverage
- SEO-52
Why it matters
Unmarked paid or user-posted links pass on endorsement the site never intended to give, which breaks Google's spam policies on link schemes. Marking everything nofollow causes the opposite problem by hiding genuine editorial links. Correct qualification tells search engines honestly how each link came about.
How to implement
- Automate the sponsored attribute on every affiliate and sponsor link.
- Set forum and comment links to ugc by default.
- Use nofollow only on other untrusted links where it is needed.
- Remove nofollow from normal editorial links that do not need it.
Checklist
- Automate the marking of affiliate and sponsor links.
- Default forum and comment links to UGC.
- Do not add nofollow to normal editorial links unnecessarily.
How to audit
- Check that affiliate and sponsor links carry the sponsored attribute.
- Check that forum and comment links default to ugc.
- Confirm that normal editorial links are not marked nofollow without need.
How UltimateSEO checks this automatically
Partly automated. The crawler flags outbound links to paid, sponsored or user-generated areas that lack rel attributes as a low-confidence signal; the commercial nature of each link is confirmed by a person. The crawl gives a signal; a person decides the final state with business evidence.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.1, revised 2026-10-07. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.