Monetization · NinjaOps Guides

rel=sponsored for Affiliate Links: Google's Policy in Plain English

Google's link spam policy treats paid or compensated links as attributes-required. Amazon affiliate links are compensated: leaving them unattributed is a link-spam signal, and sites get caught in spam updates for exactly this.

How to fix it

  1. Mark every outbound affiliate link with rel="sponsored" (rel="nofollow" is the legacy fallback).
  2. In HTML: <a rel="sponsored nofollow" href="..."> — both is safest.
  3. In WordPress, most affiliate plugins have an attribute setting; enable it once globally.
  4. Internal links stay clean — only money links carry the attribute.
<a rel="sponsored nofollow"
   href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/XXX?tag=yourtag-20">See price</a>

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