Member Avatar for diagurzula

Hi guys,

Hope things are rocking with everyone.

I use a Wordpress theme that has a few links to its sponsors in the footer. I guess I should not remove or change them. So I would like to restrict the search engines from accessing that part of the site. This is because they could penalize me. I run the risk of being penalized on arbitrary links. However, I don’t know how to go about it. Can someone show me the right way to do it? You can also come ahead with any other ideas or suggestions. Thanks a lot.
Bye.

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— you cannot selectively "block" a fragment of an HTML page (the footer) from search engines the way you block whole URLs. Robots rules and meta tags apply to full resources, so trying to hide only the footer with robots.txt or CSS/HTML tricks is unreliable and can backfire.

Google’s guidance for link handling evolved in 2019: rel="nofollow" is now treated as a hint, and Google introduced rel="sponsored" (for paid/sponsored links) and rel="ugc" (for user-generated links). For sponsored footer links the recommended, future-proof approach is to mark them appropriately rather than try to hide them. See Google’s explanation of the change and the Webmaster Guidelines on link schemes for what triggers penalties: and .

Practical options for a WordPress theme:

  • If you can edit the theme, create a child theme and update the footer template so sponsor links are marked rel="sponsored" or turned into plain text credits (no anchor).
  • If you cannot edit the theme, ask the author to provide a nofollow/sponsored option or use a lightweight plugin/child-theme override to replace the footer safely.
  • If you prefer not to show links at all, move sponsor URLs to a separate page and control that page’s indexing (but be aware robots rules only affect that URL, not the fact the main page links to it).

As pointed out, modify links if you can; as observed, single footer credits are often harmless — but keep records of paid placements and watch Search Console for manual actions. If a penalty appears, follow Google’s removal/relabelling guidance before using disavow as a last resort.

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Member Avatar for Dani

You would want to alter the links to have the "nofollow" attribute. So that the link html code looks like: <a href="http://www.site.com" rel="nofollow">Link Text</a>

However, even the nofollow attribute has been proven to pass link juice. If you want Google to pretend the sponsor links don't exist, remove them. If you feel that you should not do that because it is a condition of using the Wordpress theme, then either use a different Wordpress theme or live with the fact that Google *will* spider the sponsors and consider your site as linking to them.

Member Avatar for canadafred

Hi guys,

Hope things are rocking with everyone.

I use a Wordpress theme that has a few links to its sponsors in the footer. I guess I should not remove or change them. So I would like to restrict the search engines from accessing that part of the site. This is because they could penalize me. I run the risk of being penalized on arbitrary links. However, I don’t know how to go about it. Can someone show me the right way to do it? You can also come ahead with any other ideas or suggestions. Thanks a lot.
Bye.

Hi, I also had somewhat the same concern when I replaced my old blogger template with a customized third party one that included a couple of links in the footer. The effects of the change were either negligible or non-existent. Seems to me that having a "signature" link or two in a blog template footer has become a common enough encounter for the spiders and they have adapted to distinguish this trend, then value it or devalue it accordingly.

Also, in my opinion, if you are using a third party template, out of respect for the template creator, credits to the developer should not be removed. They have provided something of value to you for free, retaining a simple link endorsement is a sign of your gratitude for their gift.

Edited by canadafred because: n/a
Member Avatar for Dani

> Also, in my opinion, if you are using a third party template, out of respect for the template creator, credits to the developer should not be removed.
I agree. However, I also look at it from an SEO perspective, and factor in whether they simply want credit or want a link or multiple footer links. If it is something I don't feel comfortable doing, then weigh that into the decision of whether or not you wish to use the template. You might feel more comfortable using a template that doesn't have such requirements.

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