rel=sponsored
rel="sponsored" is a link attribute that tells Google a link was paid for or part of an advertisement, sponsorship, or other compensation arrangement.
Introduced by Google in 2019 alongside rel="ugc", it sits in the anchor tag as . It is the correct attribute for affiliate links, paid placements, and any link where money or goods changed hands, and it signals that the link should not pass ranking credit like a natural editorial endorsement.
This attribute is central to staying compliant with Google's link scheme guidelines. Paid links that pass dofollow link equity without disclosure are a policy violation that can trigger a manual action. Marking them sponsored (or nofollow) keeps the relationship transparent.
Note that Google treats these as hints for crawling and indexing purposes rather than strict rules, but for advertising and affiliate links you should still apply the attribute because it is the policy-compliant choice. If you are buying links purely for ranking power, no attribute makes that safe; sponsored simply makes a legitimate paid link honest.