Roger Montti published an article on SearchEngineJournal.com that discussed whether links were still important to Google when it came to search engine ranking.
Apparently Google’s Gary Illyse was at a search conference in Bulgaria and stated, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
He also tweeted out confirmation that he did indeed say that, although he mentions he should not have said that. You can read the thread on Twitter/X. Interestingly one commenter stated that this was completely untrue.
You shouldn’t have said it because it’s patently false. Links are just as important today in a sea of AI content as they have ever been. Beyond relevance, you have no capability to determine quality or expert content and the SERPs have proven this.
Roger went on to write:
In 2023 Google’s Gary Illyes shared at a PubCon Austin that links were not even in the top 3 of ranking factors. Then in March 2024, coinciding with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes.
In April Google’s John Mueller said,
Mueller explained:
“There are more important things for websites nowadays, and over-focusing on links will often result in you wasting your time doing things that don’t make your website better overall”
It was an interesting read, as someone who gets a dozen emails a day from agencies asking about buying links, they might be wasting their client’s money.
