Sponsored Posts and How to Label Them

A post somebody paid for

A restaurant offers a food blogger a free dinner and a fee to write about its new menu. A gear shop sends a hiking blog a tent to review.

Arrangements like these are now ordinary for small publishers, community sites and businesses that keep a blog. They help pay for the writing.

The trouble starts when the post reads exactly like everything else on the site. The reader assumes an independent opinion, and nothing on the page says otherwise.

Usually the payment is mentioned somewhere: a line of thanks at the bottom, or a disclosure page nobody opens. Neither is where a reader looks.

What counts as sponsored

More arrangements count than most publishers assume.

• A fee for writing the post or publishing it.
• A free product sent to review, even with no conditions attached.
• A free stay, meal or trip offered in exchange for coverage.
• A discount or credit that other customers do not get.
• A commission paid on sales made through your links.
• An ongoing arrangement, such as a sponsor of the whole site.

The free product is the one most often left unlabelled. A reviewer who kept it tends to feel no payment changed hands, while a reader weighing the verdict would want to know.

Why readers care

A blog earns its readers by recommending what it would recommend anyway. A paid recommendation is a different thing, even when the writer means every word.

Readers can weigh a sponsored post perfectly well if they know it is one. What they resent is finding out afterwards, and that discovery makes every earlier post look suspect.

What the law and Google expect

Nothing below is legal advice; a lawyer can say how it applies to a particular sponsorship.

Under Canada's Competition Act, marketing must not be false or misleading in a material respect. Advertising dressed up as an independent opinion can fall foul of that, and the business that paid for it can be responsible too.

Google's guidelines treat a paid link that passes search value as a link scheme.

Its advice to bloggers who are sent free products, published in March, covers both sides: disclose the relationship, and mark the links nofollow.

Where the label goes

At the top, before the first paragraph, where every reader passes it. A label under the title or as the opening line does the job; a line of thanks at the end does not.

Check it on a phone. A disclosure placed in a sidebar often drops below the whole article on a small screen, which is the same as leaving it out.

The label also has to travel with the post. A newsletter excerpt, a Facebook share or a tweet that links to a paid post should say it is sponsored in its own text.

On Instagram the caption is cut off after a few lines, so the label belongs at the start of the caption, not among the hashtags at the end.

Words readers understand

Plain words work: Sponsored, Paid post, Advertisement, or Sponsored by followed by the business's name.

Add one sentence saying what the arrangement was. For example, that the restaurant paid for the post and the meal, and that the opinions are the writer's own.

If the sponsor wrote or approved the text, say that instead. Readers treat a post the sponsor controlled differently, and they are entitled to.

Avoid phrases that sound like disclosure without being one. In partnership with, thanks to our friends at, and brought to you by leave readers guessing, and so do abbreviated hashtags few people recognise.

A worked example

A cobbler who resoles boots, repairs bags and stretches tight shoes keeps a blog about caring for leather: waterproofing, winter salt, which boots can be resoled and which cannot. Customers mention the posts at the counter.

Last year a boot maker sent two pairs to review, and a leather care company paid for a post about its conditioner. Both posts used the same plain voice as the rest and ended with a line of thanks.

A customer asked whether the cobbler really used that conditioner, or whether the company had paid for the praise. The honest answer was awkward.

The mechanism was simple. Readers trusted the blog because the cobbler sees every week which boots survive and which fall apart, and two posts were spending that trust without saying so.

The cobbler added a label above each post, naming the company and what it had given or paid, and moved both into a Sponsored category. Every link in them was marked nofollow.

A short page now sets out the rule: products are reviewed only after a winter of wear, sponsors do not see the text first, and every paid post says so before the first line.

Links in paid posts

Sponsors often ask for a link with particular words, such as the service and the city. That request is usually about search rankings rather than readers.

Add rel="nofollow" to every link in a sponsored post, including links to social media accounts and online shops. Readers can still click them; they simply carry no search value.

A publisher found selling links that pass value can receive a manual action in Search Console for unnatural outbound links. A sponsor that insists on a followed link is buying a link, not a post.

The sponsor agreement

A short written agreement prevents most arguments. It should cover the label wording, the nofollow links, whether the sponsor sees the text before publication, and whether it can change anything.

Also agree how long the post stays up, and what happens if the writer does not like the product. A sponsor paying for an honest review has to accept that the review may be lukewarm.

The counter-case

A site that never accepts money, products or discounts has nothing to label and no need for a policy page.

Affiliate links in a list of recommended products are a smaller matter than a paid review, and one clear line directly above the list can cover them.

For everything else the rule holds: say it in plain words, put it at the top, and keep paid links from passing value.

Before the next sponsored post

1. List every sponsor from the past two years.
2. Label those posts above the first paragraph.
3. Mark their links with nofollow.
4. Choose your wording and use it every time.
5. Write a short agreement for future sponsors.
6. Add a sponsorship page explaining your rules.
7. Check each label on a phone.

Step two is the one that protects the archive. Old unlabelled posts are found through search for years, and each one misleads every new reader who arrives.

Where paid and guest articles cross into link schemes is covered in Google's warning about articles written for links.

Frequently asked questions

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