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An interesting tidbit from the podcast from the Google folks was that Gary Illyes from Google said a heck of a lot of sites are already using the rel=sponsored link attribute. He said one million sites are already using the rel=sponsored link attribute.
This attribute was announced last September and it is optional, it is just to benefit Google, not you.
Gary was pleased to see so many sites adopt it, so quickly, without arm twisting.
The number, one million, seemed high to me, so I asked what the SEO community thought. I figured most didn't hear the figure in the podcast so I created a Twitter poll.
Less than 10% of those who took my poll said it was at the one million mark. Most thought it was closer to a thousand. Go figure.
How many sites are using the rel=sponsored attribute now? Take a guess.
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 16, 2020
Bit of an update; it might be URLs versus sites, but he did say sites in the podcast:
I mean, I know for certain that it's used on many millions of URLs. I'm monitoring both this and ugc. But I've never really dug into how many sites. It is *probably* millions, because there are quite a few platforms in the URL list
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) June 17, 2020
Not current data, but when I looked a sample months ago it was ~0.1% of sites with the sponsored attribute which could put it in the 1-2M range now. I looked at specific examples, most were from WordPress plugins, many of which have 100-200k+ installs so I think it's possible.
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) June 17, 2020
Forum discussion at Twitter.
