Google’s clear-as-mud requirement that paid links on a page must have the rel=nofollow attribute, is really annoying me. There is a very consistent sentiment that Google will down rank a web page if it determines that links on that page were paid to be there. Your options for indicating to google that they should not credit your page’s “authority” to that link is by adding a rel=nofollow in the href tag or to redirect links through a local subdirectory that has a nofollow status in a robots.txt file.

The problem is it’s been two years since this requirement dribbled out yet it’s still unclear what is considered wong and what is considered an appropriate fix. Is it just text ads? (if so why does AdSense not ad rel=nofollow to their text ads) Is it paid banner ads? Is it sponsor links? Is it barter partnership links, is it linking to other owned domains? I’m exaggerating a little here, but mostly because the definition of a paid link can be very very broad and Google has made no effort in 2 years to clarify their original vague position.

I’m in the process of modifying our phpAdsNew code to add rel=nofollow tag to our banner ad hotlinks. (for tips, see below). I see lots of concern about this in webmaster forums. I’ve heard Kevin Burton of TailRank mention it the last three times I’ve spoken with him, I see lots of blog entries, lots of references to quips from Google’s Matt Cutts, but I still can say very little with confidence about how important or overblown this is. I do agree that what we are left with is FUD and it’s rather insulting. I know their goal is to ferret out scammers, link brothels and deceptive advertisers, but the baby is going out with the bath water on this one.

Anyone have any advice or real first-hand knowledge?

If anyone wants to know how to add nofollows to their phpAdsNew banners add the following line around line 366 of /libraries/lib-view-main.inc.php

$outputbuffer = preg_replace("/>a href/i", ">a rel='nofollow' href", $outputbuffer);

Place it immediately above the lines:

// Return banner
return( array('html' => $outputbuffer,