Hi there,

Thanks for your contact!

Yes, you can update old links to add rel=”nofollow sponsored”. There will be two main ways, depending on your needs:

1. Via the UI: Edit each link individually (Pretty Links → Edit Link → Advanced Options) and check both “Nofollow” and “Sponsored” checkboxes

2. Via the database (if you want to bulk update): Run this SQL query in phpMyAdmin or similar:

UPDATE wp_prli_links SET nofollow = 1, sponsored = 1;

Replace wp_ with your table prefix if different. Always backup your database and website before executing SQL commands.

Hope that helps. Thanks!

All the best,

Hi Greg,

Thank you for reaching out!

I have just checked it, and the sponsored attribute in Pretty Links is actually working correctly, but there might be a small misunderstanding. The sponsored attribute is added to the HTTP redirect headers, not to the HTML of your page. This is actually the correct implementation for affiliate links. When someone clicks your Pretty Link:

– The link triggers a redirect
– During this redirect, Pretty Links adds the sponsored attribute to the HTTP headers
– This tells search engines that this is a sponsored/affiliate link during the redirect process

You won’t see this attribute when viewing your page’s HTML because it’s not meant to be there (if we are speaking of PL functionality) – it’s part of the redirect process that happens when someone clicks the link. To verify this is working, you can use tools like Chrome DevTools Network tab to watch the redirect when clicking the link. During the redirect, you should see the sponsored attribute in the HTTP headers: https://share.zight.com/jkuNZj4r.

I hope it helps to clarify, but please feel free to reach out again if you need further assistance. Thank you!

All the best,

Hi @rik0399,

Sorry for the delayed response!

I am still unable to replicate this issue. My TA link posted in Twitter/X works just fine, so it shouldn’t be necessary any ‘built-in’ method to make this function properly.

That leads me to ask the following questions:

• does it happen to all of your links or only a specific one, or ones?
• can you please test in an incognito tab or a different browser?
• you mentioned about redirect types. Perhaps you can try out these options in the Edit screen of the TA links: https://share.zight.com/12uZ50GO and see if any of them help?

I am looking forward to your reply.

Thanks,

Hey there,

Glad that it is fine now!

In this case, I hope we are good to close here, but please feel free to contact us anytime if you need assistance with our products.

Kind regards,

Hi @ov3rfly,

Regarding your sidenote about the trailing slash case – you’re right to point out the logic, but in practice it works correctly. We’ve tested this on clean installs with various permalink structures (including plain permalinks where post paths are just /), and keyword replacement functions properly on archives, single posts, and homepages.

The code is designed to prevent self-referencing links by excluding Pretty Links whose target URLs match the current post’s path. While the logic with NOT LIKE '%/' might seem too broad when the path is /, WordPress’s permalink handling and the way the function is called ensures keywords still get replaced correctly.

And sorry about that extra duplicated line at the end of my code snippet – the WordPress.org forums sometimes mangle code block formatting!

Thanks again for the detailed report and for testing the fix!

Best regards,