Google Link Schemes Now Includes Contractually Requiring Follow Links

Dec 21, 2018 - 8:04 am 15 by

Google Link Require Contract

Over the past few months, Google added to their link schemes guideliens page a line that basically says you cannot require someone to link to you without the nofollow attribute. If you require such a follow link in your terms of service, a contract or some other arrangement, then that is considered a "link scheme" by Google.

Here is the line that was added sometime between August and now:

Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of using nofollow or other method of blocking PageRank, should they wish.

Marie Haynes spotted this and posted about it on Twitter:

So make sure you do not legally require people to link to you with a follow link. Just leave those out of our terms of service.

Funny how the nofollow concept has grown and expanded over the years. ;-P

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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