Google begins rolling out the “link spam update,” which makes its algorithms simpler at identifying and nullifying link spam.

The update begins rolling out today and can take a minimum of a fortnight to roll out broadly to look leads to multiple languages.

Google cautions that changes in rankings are imminent for a few site owners:

“In our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam-fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update…

Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.”

Information strewn throughout Google’s announcement suggests a specific emphasis on targeting links from sponsored, guest, and affiliate content.

In fact, the announcement begins as an off-the-cuff reminder to price affiliate content with the acceptable rel values. Google buries the lede because the news about this algorithm update isn’t mentioned until the top of the blog post.

This is a sign that Google wants site owners to concentrate on its advice on the way to handle links within content where there’s an exchange useful involved.

Let’s re-evaluate Google’s guidance, which appears to be especially relevant to the present algorithm update.

Google Link Tag Best Practices

Google reminds site owners to qualify links appropriately when linking bent other sites.

Sites are required to feature tags to links where there’s a worth exchange between the 2 domains.

In particular, Google singles out affiliate links and links from sponsored and guest content.

Here’s what Google recommends for every sort of link:

• Affiliate links: Google asks sites participating in affiliate programs to qualify these links with rel=“sponsored”, regardless of whether these links were created manually or dynamically.
• Links from sponsored posts: Links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) are to be marked up with the rel=“sponsored” value.
• Links from guest posts: Links from guest posts are to be marked up with the rel=“nofollow” value.

Google adds that it may issue manual actions when it finds sites that fail to qualify the above types of links appropriately.

Source: Google Search Central Blog