# Sponsored links, nofollow, dofollow: what a paid placement should give you > Why a paid placement should give you a rel=sponsored link rather than a dofollow one, per Google's own rules, and what a public brand page is worth instead. Published 2026-09-05 · 7 min read · sponsored-links, seo, transparency, bidsurvivor Canonical: https://bidsurvivor.space/blog/sponsored-nofollow-dofollow-paid-placement-links --- Somewhere in every paid-placement pitch there is a line about the link. "Dofollow backlink included." "High-DA link." Sometimes just "SEO benefit". This post is about what a paid placement should actually give you, why the honest answer is **sponsored links** — the `rel="sponsored"` attribute — and why a placement that promises a followed link for money is offering something its seller is not supposed to sell. It is also about what we do on [BidSurvivor](/), which is ours, so weigh the last section accordingly. ## The three attributes, in Google's own words Google's Search Central documentation on [qualifying outbound links](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links) describes three values for the `rel` attribute on a link: - **`rel="sponsored"`** for links that are advertisements or paid placements — anything created as part of an advertising, sponsorship or other compensation agreement. - **`rel="ugc"`** for user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. - **`rel="nofollow"`** for cases where a site does not want to imply any endorsement, including passing ranking credit, and neither of the other values applies. A link with none of these is what the industry calls "dofollow", a word that appears nowhere in Google's documentation, because it is simply the default: a link the site vouches for. The same page says Google treats all three attributes as hints about which links to consider or exclude, rather than as directives. And Google's [spam policies](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, with the note that buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship is a normal part of the web and is not a violation as long as the links are qualified with `rel="nofollow"` or `rel="sponsored"`. Put those two pages next to each other and the "dofollow backlink included" pitch reads differently. The seller is either going to mark the link as sponsored, in which case the SEO benefit they are selling is the thing the attribute exists to remove, or they are going to leave it unmarked, in which case they are selling you a link that the rules on both sides say should have been marked. Neither is what the pitch implied. ## What a paid link is actually worth, then Less than the pitch and more than nothing. Strip the ranking story out and a link from a paid placement still does three things. **It is a link people click.** This is what advertising has always been. A `rel="sponsored"` link is a perfectly ordinary link to a browser; the attribute changes nothing about where the reader goes on clicking it. The click-through count is the measure, and on a placement that publishes it, you can see it. **It says where the traffic came from.** A link that appears on a page with your name and one line of copy shows up in your analytics as a visit from that page. You can tell what the placement sent, which is more than most channels give you. **It may get you crawled.** Google's documentation describes the attributes as hints, which means a qualified link may still be followed for crawling. That is a hint, not a promise, and nobody honest will sell it to you as more. What a paid link does not do is what the pitch promised: transfer ranking authority from the seller's domain to yours. A placement priced on domain authority is priced on the thing the attribute exists to withhold, and a buyer paying for it is paying for an assurance the seller cannot honestly give. ## The test to run on any placement Before paying for a placement that mentions links, ask three questions and expect plain answers. 1. **What `rel` value will the link carry?** "Sponsored" is the honest answer. "Nofollow" is honest too. "Dofollow" is a warning about what else the seller is willing to say. 2. **Will you publish what the link sent?** A placement that counts and publishes its click-throughs has replaced a ranking promise it cannot keep with a traffic number you can check. The [platforms that publish their numbers](/blog/ad-platforms-that-publish-their-numbers) are a short list. 3. **Is there a page about my brand that a person can find?** A link is a pixel-sized thing; a page with your name, your copy and a record of what you did there is something a search engine can index and a person can send to someone else. The third question is the one sellers rarely think about, and it is where an honest placement can give you more than a dishonest one, not less. ## What we do, exactly Our answer sheet, checkable in the page source of the board. **Every winner's link carries `rel="sponsored"`.** A brand that holds a slot gets a real link to its site — a working anchor that opens the site when clicked — marked as what it is: a paid placement. We do not sell "dofollow" and would not know how to do so within Google's rules. The link is there while the brand holds the slot; if it is [outbid before the twelve hours end](/blog/outbid-what-happens-to-the-brand-that-lost), the link on the board goes with the slot, and the opens and click-throughs it counted while holding stay on its page. **The directory badges we display are nofollow unless a listing deal says otherwise.** The board shows badges from directories that list it. Those links carry `rel="nofollow"` by default, because we did not choose them one by one and will not vouch for a link we did not choose. The exception is a listing whose terms are explicitly link-for-badge — the directory checks for a followed link — and those are marked followed, deliberately, one at a time. That is the distinction Google's documentation draws, and we would rather state it than have someone find it in the markup. **Every placed brand gets its own page at /b/.** It carries the brand's name, its line of copy, the slots it has held, and its own card opens and click-throughs, counted separately. That page is indexable once it has content — a tagline or a summary — and is marked not to be indexed while it is nothing but a URL, because a hundred empty pages would cost the ones with something to say. The brand page is not a link-authority product either. It is a public, dated record that a person can read and a crawler can find. None of this makes the board a good SEO purchase. It is not one. It is a place to be seen for twelve hours by whoever is looking, with the count published afterwards. What the sponsored attribute does is keep the thing you are buying and the thing you are told you are buying the same, which is most of what [transparency in an ad platform](/blog/ad-platform-transparency) comes down to. ## The short version A paid placement should give you a link marked `rel="sponsored"`, a count of what it sent, and a page a person can find. Anything sold as a dofollow link for money is being sold against the rules that govern both of you, and the ranking benefit is the part of the deal most likely to be withdrawn without notice. Buy the click, buy the count, and let the attribute say what the link is. If it helps, the [backlink checker](/tools/backlinks) shows which of your links have ever sent a real visitor. It is free and needs no account.