Quote from: ETFbitcoin on Today at 10:02:05 AM

Quote from: mprep on October 19, 2023, 03:30:19 PM

rel="ugc" attributes on links posted by Newbies (so essentially anyone without any merit points) are already being added since around January, 2021:

Quote from: theymos on January 03, 2021, 01:35:25 PM

Not sure what they're trying to do. In case it is some SEO-motivated thing, I added rel="ugc" to all newbie links. While I was at it, I also added this to all links in signatures.

Thanks to everyone reporting them!

Thanks for letting us know. I didn't inspect link posted by newbie user earlier. Anyway, i did further research and Google say other way to discourage spammer is by adding "noindex robots meta tag"[1]. But it's not practical option since entire page wouldn't be index by google. But on other hand, one of Google documentation mention it's possible to include multiple values inside rel[2]. Anyway i have following question to people who own website,

Do you think using all possible value (such as rel="nofollow,noindex,ugc") would further discourage spammer from performing SEO spam?

[1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/prevent-abuse
[2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links

AFAIK rel="ugc" sends the same signal to Google as the old rel="nofollow" - "I don't endorse or vouch for this website". The only difference is that the signal has more granularity (identifiying the particular reason as to why the website doesn't vouch for the URL). Anyone still spamming with the effective nofollow-like links on their SEO spam is most likely doing one or more of the following:

Doing it as a hired marketing agency and partially deceiving their client who expects dofollow links.
Hoping to rank up to where their links become dofollow
Are fine with getting nofollow backlinks (e.g. if the link is visible, to entice potential visitors)
Havent bothered figuring out or monitoring if their links are dofollow

There's other reasons, but in general, those that are still spamming links that have been nofollow for 2 years now are probably not going to stop as those who do care have already figured it out and directed their efforts elsewhere.