rel=sponsored for paid links: Crawl Audit check 64

Short answer: if you're paid for a link (an advert, a sponsored post or an affiliate link), Google asks you to mark it with rel="sponsored". Unmarked paid links can count as link spam under Google's policies. Check 64 is informational and always passes. It reports how many links are marked sponsored, because it can't tell which of your links are paid.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: sponsored links found, with a count.
• Pass: none found, with a reminder to mark any paid or affiliate links.

What Google says

• "Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value."
• "The nofollow attribute was previously recommended for these types of links and is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred."
• Google's spam policies say having paid links is "not a violation of our policies ... as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value to the <a> tag."

<a href="https://example.com/product?ref=you" rel="sponsored">Example product</a>

What counts as paid

• Affiliate links that earn you a commission.
• Links in sponsored posts, or that a brand asked for in exchange for a product or a fee.
• Banner and text adverts.

Ordinary links you chose to include, such as a source, a tool you recommend unpaid or a partner's site, don't need it.

On your platform

• WordPress: add rel="sponsored" in the block's link settings or HTML. Affiliate-link plugins often have a setting to do it automatically.
• Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: edit the link in HTML or code view to add the attribute.
• Next.js: add rel="sponsored" to the <a> element.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Qualify your outbound links to Google (updated 10 December 2025) and Spam policies (updated 28 August 2026), checked 3 October 2026.