Google has been noticing lots of links being sold, purchased and exchanged. Brands have been engaging with popular bloggers to provide them free goods in return for links to their site. Seeing this practice on the rise, the search engine has published a new set of guidelines for bloggers who receive free products from brands in exchange for links. It has offered some advice on what bloggers must do in such a situation. Rather, Google says that it will take actions if it reckons that links have been added to posts in return for free goods. Google advises bloggers to nofollow links to company sites, social pages, mobile apps, online merchant’s page or any sites selling the product in question, and also to a review site’s page showing reviews for the product. In Google’s words, “Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically.” This is because the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide free goods in exchange for the link.
Google has also insisted marketing firms to remind bloggers about the nofollow usage. Thus, the companies that bloggers are working with must remind bloggers to use nofollow on the links they provide. Google also adds that content creators must disclose their relationship with a third party, just as if this was a form of sponsored content, by stating this near the top of the post so that readers know that it is sponsored content before reading it. In fact, certain countries have strict laws that make this act of disclosure regarding sponsorship compulsory.