If you buy sponsored articles, you will eventually have the same conversation with a client or an editor: what does the label on the article mean, what does the link in it do, and can anyone promise a particular outcome? The short answers are simple, but the confident wrong answers are everywhere. Here is the honest version — the one we give our own clients before they spend anything.
1. What is rel=“sponsored”?
It is a small piece of markup on a link that tells a search engine the link is part of a paid arrangement. Google introduced it in 2019 alongside two siblings: rel=“nofollow”, which tells a search engine not to treat the link as an endorsement, and rel=“ugc”, for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts.
A sponsored article link usually carries rel=“sponsored”, or sometimes rel=“nofollow”. Either way, the label is a disclosure: the machine-readable equivalent of the words “Sponsored” or “Paid for by” that a reader sees on the page. It is not a penalty, and it is not a mark against the article. It is the correct label for what the article is.
A site that labels sponsored content properly is protecting its readers, and a buyer should want that. Coverage on a site that discloses honestly is worth more than coverage on a site that hides the arrangement, because the second kind of site is the one search engines and readers eventually stop trusting.
2. Why does each site set its own policy?
Because the site owns the decision — not the buyer, and not us. Every site in our directory publishes under its own editorial policy, which covers how sponsored articles are labelled and how links in them are marked. Some label every sponsored article prominently and mark its links as sponsored. Some use nofollow on all paid links as a house rule. Some vary by section. None of this is negotiable at the point of sale, and no placement partner can change it for you.
That shapes what you can reasonably ask for. You can ask a site to publish your article, label it according to its own policy, and keep it live. You cannot ask it to adopt a different labelling policy for your order. A seller who says otherwise is selling you something the site has not agreed to — the site will simply publish under its own rules anyway, or decline the article.
This is also why our quote covers the placement, the article and the reporting, and never a promise about a link attribute. The attribute is the site’s call, made at publication.
3. Can anyone promise you a particular link attribute?
No. Not us, not a marketplace, not a freelancer with a list. The link attribute is set by the site that publishes the article, on its own system, under its own policy. A seller who promises a particular attribute before the article exists is promising something they do not control.
The same applies to the related promise that sometimes travels with it: that a particular attribute will produce a particular result in search. Search engines decide how to treat a link, and they do not publish a formula that maps one attribute to one outcome. Anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing, or selling.
What a placement partner can promise is narrower, and it is the part that matters: the article will be published on the named site, labelled under that site’s policy, with one link in it, and we will send you a live-link report so you can check the label and the link yourself. If the link is removed within 12 months, we replace it free of charge. That is the whole promise, and it is written down before you pay.
4. Does labelled coverage still have value?
Yes, and this is the point clients worry about most. A sponsored article that is labelled properly still does the job a sponsored article is for: it puts your story in front of real readers in the market, in a publication those readers trust, with a link they can follow to your site.
Readers do not object to sponsored content as such. They object to content that pretends to be something else, that has nothing to do with their interests, or that makes claims nobody has checked. A clearly labelled article on a site they read regularly is none of those things.
There is a second kind of value too. When a customer in Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg looks your company up, or asks an AI assistant about it, the description they get is drawn from what has been published about you. If the only pages about you are your own, that is the whole description. Local coverage — labelled, honest, on sites people in the market actually read — becomes part of how your company is described in that market. We promise no particular result in search or in AI answers, because those outcomes belong to the search engines. But being described by established local publications, rather than only by yourself, is the starting point, and labelling does not take it away.
5. What does Google actually say?
Google’s public guidance is short and consistent: paid links should be marked so search engines can tell they are paid, using rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow”. A site that marks paid links this way is following the rules. A site that hides paid links, or sells links while pretending they are editorial, is the one taking a risk — and the risk falls on the site and on the buyer who asked for it.
There is nothing in that guidance that says a labelled link is worthless, and nothing that says an unlabelled paid link is clever. The guidance exists so readers and search engines can tell an editorial recommendation from a paid placement. That distinction protects the buyer too: your brand is not attached to a practice your client would be embarrassed to explain.
6. What we decline, and why
Some briefs we turn down, and the labelling question is often the reason. We decline any article that asks a site to remove or change its sponsored label or its link attributes. We decline articles that make claims without evidence. We decline gambling content from operators who cannot prove a licence in the target market, and crypto or forex content from firms that cannot prove they are regulated. We decline adult and dating content, essay mills, follower buying, kratom and CBD, piracy, political campaigns, unlicensed gambling, unregulated crypto, trading signals and crypto casinos.
We decline them for the same reason we insist on labels: the directory only works if the sites in it trust us, and the sites only trust us if we send them briefs their editors can publish without embarrassment. A directory full of sites that will publish anything is a directory buyers stop using. The refusals are what keep the placements worth buying.
Read the policy, then ask for prices
If you want the full version of what we accept and decline, it is set out in our content and disclosure policy. The frequently asked questions cover the process side: quotes, turnaround, payment and the replacement guarantee. And if you are ready to brief an article, ask for prices for the sites and markets you need — with the label and the link attribute decided by the site, as it should be.