My affiliate links are being crawled by Google. Is this a bad thing? Also, should I add rel: nofollow to affiliate links?

[nomad_blogger]

Hi All,

I have an issue on Google Search Console. It seems all my affiliate links are being crawled. Is this a bad thing? The reason I found out is that all but one link was flagged with a warming. It goes on to say that it was blocked by robots.txt. The strange thing is that I've not set any links to be blocked in robots.txt.

Also, should affiliate links be nofollow?  I'm asking because I was recently sent this article by Yoast on how to properly cloak my affiliate links without using a plugin. https://yoast.com/cloak-affiliate-links/  In the method, they apply the nofollow and noindex rules to the links. I'm just a little confused on how to go about affiliate links the SEO friendly way.

[AswadBaghlol]

I was facing the same issue on my site. After checking a few guides, here is what I found

• Make them no-follow (better add the new sponsored tag in them)

• Yes, it is a bad thing