Google Says “Links Matter Less”—We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It’s True

The methodology was a bit different. It was low volume (2,000–5,000), non-branded queries. I can’t do an exact comparison, but the correlations were higher at the time:

• Links: 0.27
• Followed links: 0.25
• Referring domains: 0.29
• Followed Referring Domains: 0.26

The current correlations for these metrics and similar queries are 0.22–0.24, and may be slightly lower than that for non-branded terms as I mentioned before.

This is in line with Google comments on links becoming less important and how SEOs perceive them. However, one of the reasons I wanted to run this study is to see how this changes in the next couple years. With the rise of AI content, I suspect Google may end up relying on links or other signals more, and may start weighting them higher.

Links and RDs correlated at .33 for local queries, which is a lot higher than what we’ve seen and even higher than what we saw overall years ago. I suspect that because content on sites for local service companies is very similar, links make a good differentiator to see which company is popular.

I want to point out that internal links seem to matter a lot more for local queries. I suspect there are fewer external link signals for these queries, so the additional signals from internal links become more important.

If we look at the data by search intent, navigational queries have the highest correlation. These are mostly branded, and as I said, brands have more links.

What’s more interesting is that backlinks for informational queries seem to have a higher correlation for rankings than commercial and transactional queries.

I suspect that because competition levels for these terms are high, links may be considered a good signal by Google. It could also be that better content ends up getting more links over time.

Final thoughts

Links are one part of a bigger ranking puzzle, but you still need to do other things well, like create great content. Where Google has more signals, they may rely less on any one signal. Where they have fewer signals, they may rely more on things like links. In high-competition areas where content may be strong, they also may rely on link signals as more of a differentiator.

The way I view it is that companies, especially local companies, probably should focus on at least foundational links. Larger companies likely already have marketing efforts and content bringing them links, so links may not be as much of a priority. However, when pages for large companies need a push, I’ve seen even internal links give a nice boost.