UGC link(UGC)

Long definition

rel="ugc" was introduced alongside rel="sponsored" and the reframing of rel="nofollow" to hint status on September 10, 2019. The three values form Google's link-intent vocabulary: editorial dofollow at one end, paid sponsored in the middle, user-generated UGC at the other end.

UGC applies to any link your platform did not editorially place, but a user did:

• Comments under articles or videos
• Forum posts and discussion threads (Reddit-style, phpBB, Discourse, vBulletin)
• Customer reviews with embedded links
• User profiles with personal-site fields
• Q&A platforms (Stack Exchange, Quora-style)
• Wiki contributions from the public

Most CMSs and forum software apply rel="ugc nofollow" to comment links by default — WordPress has applied nofollow to comments since 2005 and ugc since 2019 (depending on theme/plugin). The combination is explicit: this link is user-generated and the publisher does not vouch for it.

Google treats ugc as a hint, not a directive — it may still pass anchor-text context, especially when the link target is otherwise corroborated. This nuance matters: a Reddit thread that's been linked and discussed widely can still benefit a target page even though every link inside Reddit is ugc nofollow.

The platform's accountability story changes with ugc. If a forum is overrun with spam links and they're all marked ugc, Google can simply ignore them at scale rather than penalize the host site for hosting spam. This is the design intent: protect the platform from being responsible for arbitrary user submissions while still letting some signal flow when the content is high quality.

Common misconceptions

• "UGC links are worthless." They drive referral traffic and brand exposure. Google may treat them as hints. A high-quality Reddit or Stack Overflow link absolutely contributes to topical context and indirect authority.
• "I should remove ugc to give my commenters more SEO value." That undermines the trust signal of your platform. Better: cultivate good commenters, but keep the markup honest. Removing ugc to manipulate ranking is a footprint Google detects.
• "ugc and nofollow are interchangeable." Functionally similar today, but semantically distinct. nofollow says "I don't vouch." ugc says "this came from a user, not me." Use both together for comment systems — it's the most accurate disclosure.
• "Only forums need ugc." Any site that lets users submit content with links — review platforms, Q&A sites, wikis, classifieds — should apply ugc to those submissions. The boundary is editorial control, not site type.