Thursday, September 08, 2016
Google has long taken a
strong stance
against links
that manipulate a site’s PageRank.
Today we would like to reiterate our policy on the creation of keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality
links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.
Widgets can help website owners enrich the experience of their site and engage users. However,
some widgets add links to a site that a webmaster did not editorially place and contain anchor
text that the webmaster does not control. Because these links are not naturally placed, they’re
considered a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Below you can find the examples of widgets which contain links that violate Google Webmaster
Guidelines:
Google’s webspam team may take
manual actions
on unnatural links. When a manual
action is taken, Google will notify the site owners through
Search Console. If you
receive such a warning for unnatural links to your site and you use links in widgets to promote
your site, we recommend resolving these issues and requesting reconsideration.
You can resolve issues with unnatural links by making sure they don’t pass PageRank. To do this,
add a rel="nofollow" attribute on the widget links or remove the links entirely.
After fixing or removing widget links and any other unnatural links to your site, let Google know
about your change by
submitting a reconsideration request in Search Console.
Once the request has been reviewed, you’ll get a notification about whether the reconsideration
request was successful or not.
Also, we would like to remind webmasters who use widgets on their sites to check those widgets for
any unnatural links. Add a rel="nofollow" attribute on those unnatural links or
remove the links entirely from the widget.
For more information, please watch our
video about widget links
and refer to our
Webmaster Guidelines on Link Schemes.
Additionally, you can ask questions in our
Webmaster Help Forums,
where a community of webmasters can help with their experience.
How we apply this
We archive Search Central announcements because client questions often trace back to a change that was announced years ago. Reading the original is faster than reconstructing it from second-hand summaries.
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