What Is UGC Link Attribute?

How the UGC Link Attribute Works

The UGC link attribute is a value placed in a link’s rel attribute: <a href="https://example.com" rel="ugc">. “UGC” stands for user-generated content, and the value tells Google exactly that — this link was placed by one of the site’s users, not by its editorial team. Because search engines can pass link equity through an ordinary link, open user areas like comment threads have always been a target for spammers dropping links to farm ranking credit. The rel="ugc" value discloses the link’s origin so Google can decline to pass that credit automatically.

Google’s guidance describes it plainly: mark user-generated content links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value. Like its sibling attributes, ugc operates as a hint Google weighs rather than an absolute command. Its advantage over blanket nofollow is precision: instead of a generic “I don’t vouch for this,” it names why the link is being qualified — it came from your users.

Why It Exists

For years, publishers had a single tool for any link they hadn’t personally vetted: plain nofollow. A spammy comment link and a paid advertisement received the same undifferentiated flag, telling Google nothing about the link’s nature. The ugc attribute, introduced in 2019 alongside sponsored, splits that catch-all into meaningful categories. Naming user-generated links specifically helps Google understand linking patterns across the web and gives publishers a cleaner default for the parts of their sites visitors can write to.

In practice this is a configuration decision, not manual work. Most content management systems and forum platforms can be set to apply rel="ugc" to user-submitted links automatically, so a site enables it once and every comment or post inherits it.

Where rel=“ugc” Applies

• Blog comments — the classic case the attribute was designed for.
• Forum and community posts — threads and replies where members post links freely.
• Product and service reviews — user reviews that may contain outbound links.
• Profile fields and Q&A answers — any user-editable area that accepts a URL.

Plain nofollow still works across all of these, but ugc names the origin explicitly, and values combine — rel="ugc sponsored" marks a user-posted link that is also paid — so you can describe a link’s nature with more nuance than a single attribute allows.

Example of the UGC Link Attribute

The attribute traces to a documented, dated announcement. On September 10, 2019, Google published “Evolving ‘nofollow’ — new ways to identify the nature of links,” introducing rel="ugc" for user-generated content and rel="sponsored" for paid placements to sit beside the existing rel="nofollow". Google stated the three attributes would work as hints for ranking purposes immediately, with nofollow also becoming a hint for crawling and indexing on March 1, 2020.

Two points from that announcement define how ugc is used. First, Google framed it as a recommendation, not a mandate — there was no need to change existing nofollow links, and nofollow remains an acceptable way to flag user links, but ugc is the more descriptive option. Second, Google confirmed that rel accepts multiple values, offering rel="ugc sponsored" as a valid example for a link that is both user-generated and paid. The example pins down the attribute’s job: it is a precise, optional disclosure that a link came from a site’s users rather than its editors, letting a publisher describe its own comment sections and forums accurately to search engines.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

The UGC link attribute, rel=“ugc”, tells Google a link came from user-generated content like comments or forum posts rather than a site’s editorial team, so ranking credit shouldn’t pass through it by default. Introduced in September 2019 as a precise alternative to blanket nofollow, it lets publishers describe the origin of user links accurately, usually via an automatic platform setting.