The rel attribute audit competitors hope you skip

The rel attribute audit competitors hope you skip

Word is a lot of 'authority' link counts evaporate the second you read the rel attributes.

A profile boasting links from major publishers looks elite — until you filter and find 80% are tagged sponsored or ugc. That's paid placement and forum/comment content the publisher explicitly walled off from passing weight.

— Tell: clusters of links from one big domain all carrying rel=sponsored = a paid program (the publisher's own ad product), not editorial endorsement.
— ugc-heavy profiles are riding comment sections and user posts, which carry almost nothing.

Multiple flashy profiles collapse under a rel-attribute filter — the dofollow editorial subset is a fraction of the headline number.

Auditors who quote total backlinks without splitting dofollow vs sponsored vs ugc are quoting marketing, not authority.

Watch this space.