Got to know about this news from my colleague Jai’s post in linkedin.
” Google’s New No Follow Admission Comes As No Surprise. Yesterday, Google announced an important new update to its rel=”nofollow” tag.
Touting the change as an evolution, Google said it’s introducing two new tags, in addition to “nofollow”. These tags (rel=”ugc” and rel=”sponsored” will allow webmasters more opportunities for “link sculpting” and to hoard page rank.
Google had originally introduced the rel=”nofollow” tag to allow webmasters to block link juice from going to certain links. But Google is now admitting that it has long taken even nofollow links into consideration when ranking sites.
The rel=”ugc” (which is applied to user content such as blog comments) and the rel=”sponsored” tags (which is applied to paid links and adverts) will be used to hint at the value of the content being linked to.
The sponsored link nofollow gives Google the strong hint to not give any PageRank. It also contributes to Google’s understanding of the web page itself, that the page sells sponsored links. You can read more details on the changes at Google’s blog: https://lnkd.in/dbbjBTM
Really, it must be a revelation to many. A Nofollow link, after all, is not that bad.