The line is two public pages
White hat and gray hat are nicknames. They are not in the documentation, and this article will not translate them into a list of tricks. The spam policies name buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, and advertorials that pretend not to be ads. The outbound link page tells the publisher to use rel="sponsored" when the link is a paid placement. Your decision is which of those descriptions you are willing to match, in writing, before the charge.
If the plan only works when a reviewer cannot tell the mention was paid, you are already on the side the spam policy describes. Stop. There is no third option in this article where the payment stays hidden and the link is 'careful.' Careful, here, means the file you could show.
Type one of these two sentences
| Your situation | What you type | What you need back before you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Counsel has allowed an unmarked dofollow placement, and the page would still be worth a mention if the rel were sponsored | We accept the DoFollow label on this row. Anchor is the product name. One href. Visible label only if the editor requires it; if they require it, confirm before drafting. | Nothing more, if the row's link-type cell already says DoFollow. |
| Counsel wants every paid href marked | Publish with rel="sponsored" and a visible sponsored label next to the mention. If this row can only ship DoFollow, cancel and do not draft. | A written yes that names sponsored. The checkout button will not supply that yes. It says DoFollow Guaranteed. |
The shipped rows are DoFollow. The inventory card prints DoFollow Guaranteed. The FAQ replaces a link that becomes nofollow inside 12 months. Read as a contract, that is a promise to restore an unmarked endorsement. It collides with row 2 of the table. Row 2 is not a negotiation you start after the draft is live. The glossary shows the HTML you will be looking at on delivery day so the yes, if you get one, can be checked in view source.
The page has to be worth it either way
Row 1 is not a free pass. The test is whether you would still want the mention if the editor came back and said the rel would be sponsored. If the answer is no, you were buying the attribute, not the audience. Take the row off the cart. SAAS-109 at $179 is a comparison site with 94,200 listed visits. Those visits are the reason the row can survive a sponsored label. A thin site you only wanted because the href would be dofollow does not survive the test, and the PBN worksheet is how you notice that thinness on delivery day.
A visible label and the rel should agree. rel="sponsored" in the HTML with no words a reader can see is a crawler-only disclosure. A bright Sponsored line with a dofollow href tells the human and still offers the link as an endorsement. Pick the combination your sentence in the table already named. Do not let the draft invent a third combination because it 'looks more natural.' Natural is not a rel value.
What the file contains the day it goes live
- The sentence you typed, and the reply you got.
- The live URL, the anchor, and the rel tokens from view source.
- Whether a reader can see a label without opening source.
- The day-7 index check. The attribute and the index are separate lines.
That file is what you read if a link-spam note actually gets posted. You mark placements that match the note. You do not mark all of them because you are nervous. You also do not place the next order that week. The file is the reason the week can be quiet.
A row that fails even if counsel said dofollow is fine
Counsel has signed row 1. The cart has a site whose only recent articles are product roundups, three dofollow hrefs each, and the brief you were given is 'anchor best contract renewal software, link the homepage.' Row 1's test was: would you still want this if the rel came back sponsored? You would not. You wanted the attribute and the query. Take it off. The $65 AI-108 row fails a finance product for a different reason, topic, which is decision A in the two-row piece. Failing for topic and failing for 'I only wanted dofollow' are both fails. Only the second one is about this page.
Write the fail in the note in one line: 'Removed. We would not want the mention with rel=sponsored, so we do not want it dofollow either.' That line is what stops the same row returning next month under a new campaign name. A line that says 'maybe later' is how it returns.
FAQ
Is every dofollow guest post on this catalog over the line?
The placement is paid and the product offers DoFollow. Whether that matches Google's description depends on disclosure and on why you bought it. The nickname gray hat does not answer it. Row 2 of the table is the path if you need the paid link marked. Row 1 is the path if you have accepted an unmarked href and the page is still worth it with a label.