Could You Be Losing Out on Commissions with the WordPress 4.7.4 Update?

The latest WordPress (WP) update is killing affiliate links, or so it seems.

Wait a minute? Does this mean you could be losing money without knowing it? Possible...if you're setting up your blog posts such that external links open in a new tab, i.e., if those links are affiliate links.

The Internet marketing world always trembles when a new update is rolled out. If it's not the great bear Google, it's something else. This time around, there has been a lot of talk going on about the latest WP update. I first noticed it on the 23rd of April while I was writing a new blog post. Each time I saved my post, I noticed the rel="noopener noreferrer" was automatically added. If you occasionally switch to WP editor instead of always using WP visual composer when writing your blog posts, you would have probably noticed it too. And no matter how often you delete the rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute and save your post, it would come right back.

Why worry about the rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute?

I did a bit of research on this and found that this attribute essentially strips all the referring code. What this means is that if you're promoting products listed on Amazon, for example, and someone clicks on your affiliate link, which opens in a new tab, the rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute prevents Amazon from detecting where the referral came from. The "noreferrer" deletes the data so Amazon won't be able to give you credit for referring a customer.

UPDATE: As mentioned by Dom Wells in the comment section below, this does NOT affect Amazon commissions, which is good news. I don't know about other affiliate programs, though.

Any solution?

Yes, the rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute is automatically added only when you select "open post in new tab" or add in WP editor. The rel="noopener noreferrer" attribute disappears once you unselect "open post in new tab". However, it seems that old posts are not affected by this update. So you might just do a quick check on WP editor to find out whether rel="noopener noreferrer" was automatically added.

You can also solve this problem by including the following code in your functions.php:

// Stop TinyMCE from adding "noopener noreferrer" to external links with target="blank"
add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init','tinymce_allow_unsafe_link_target');
function tinymce_allow_unsafe_link_target( $mceInit ) {
$mceInit['allow_unsafe_link_target']=true;
return $mceInit;
}

For those of us who are code-challenged, there're smart plugins to do the trick. LeadSpring Link Fixer has been recommended by many Internet marketers.

I haven't used LinkSpring Link Fixer myself since I had few posts that I wrote after the WP update and instead chose to update my links manually. If you're going to use this plugin, it would be prudent to back up your website first.

Please follow the links below for additional information:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/remove-rel-noo...

https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/new-wordpress-update-april-2017-noopener-noreferrer.3004/