Why Google just slapped thousands of bloggers' review sites.

Why Google just slapped thousands of bloggers' review sites, and what you should do to avoid lost traffic and search engine position now!

What happened?

Google disapproves of bloggers giving standard follow-links in exchange for their review of a free product or service. Earlier this week, exactly one month after a "best practices" post on their blog (1), Google placed manual action penalties—en masse—on blog reviewers who apparently did not get the message.

Google holds, in this case, that the external link to the gift benefactor must be a "nofollow" link.

Six steps to take if this happens to you:

Hopefully you were not slapped with this penalty. Because it's a big one. But if it happens to you, 1) remove paid links, 2) remove exchanged links, and 3) mark links to the sites for which you reviewed a product or service given to you free, as "nofollow". Also 4) make any affiliate links to the product under review (even if it is on Amazon) "nofollow". (Be sure to catch Google's John Mueller's April 11, 2016 comment on this point, further below.)

There is one more thing that you may not at first consider: what about the other guy? This brings up: 5) make certain that any link to your site, from "the other guy" (your benefactor bearing free gifts), is also a "nofollow". An email explaining the situation, and that it is important for both of you to have nofollow-links to the other, will probably do the trick.

Once you have cleared the deck, you can 6) request Google to reconsider your site. Do this through Google's Search Console tool. (2)

How do you make links "nofollow"?

Simply add rel="nofollow" within the "a" tag of the link. Like this (sort of):

<a href="http://example.com" rel="nofollow" alt="my good buddy who gave me freebies to say this">The whizbang bing boom! product</a>

"rel" is considered an "attribute" of the link; it stands for "relationship", as in relationship to you, the site owner. Just keep a space before it and at the end, to separate it from other attributes like "title", "alt", and "href".

Preventative measures:

Google's John Mueller addressed what in effect is a sponsored post like this:

"It's fine to keep these kinds of posts up, sometimes there's a lot of useful information in them! However, the links in those posts specifically need to be modified so that they don't pass PageRank (by using the rel=nofollow)." (3)

In response to one person in particular, he also brought up "disclosure". Listen to how he cautions other bloggers:

"Obviously, it's also good to disclose this kind of relationship to your readers too -- on the page I was looking at, you did that already, but others might not be doing that. (4)

Going forward, for all of us bloggers using affiliations to generate income; there are some lessons here. Are they lessons in morality— the subtler, little-bit fuzzy side? One could argue this.

Google is saying that, for their part, they consider links differently—in terms of ranking the linked site—if they were exchanged for goods or services. And as to the sponsorship itself, their point is that the viewer should be told if the post contains sponsored content. This translates to 1) nofollow links to the sponsor and product; 2) nofollow links from the sponsor to you; and 3) a disclosure in the post for the viewer. Fair enough?

But don't go "nofollow" crazy.

Mueller again cautioned, saying

"There's absolutely no need to nofollow every link on your site! " (5)

And again,

"You don't need to nofollow everything on your blog, just the links that are involved in an exchange like this." (4) (emphasis mine)

He also clarified Google's position, adding,

"However, those that are there because of an exchange (such as a product or service for a review) should have a rel=nofollow on links to the product, to their sales pages, and to any social media profiles that are linked because of the review. Also, it's always a good idea to clearly label these kinds of posts for your readers too." (5)

That about sums it up!

--Fran

Footnotes:

(1) Google warning to bloggers reviewing free products received from companies - March 11, 2016. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/best-pra...

(2) Google's Search Console Tool (url shortened due to the query string) http://bit.ly/1W08rWd

(3) John Mueller - Google (as "JohnMu") - Webmaster Central Help Forum - April 11, 2016. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/...

(4) John Mueller - Google (as "JohnMu") - Webmaster Central Help Forum - April 11, 2016. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/...

(5) John Mueller - Google (as "JohnMu") - Webmaster Central Help Forum - April 11, 2016. https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/...