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

Google has said links are less important than they used to be, and most SEOs have come to accept that as true. Our findings indicate that this is true overall, but for certain types of queries, links matter more.

I still believe that links should be a part of your SEO strategy, but they shouldn't be your whole strategy. A while back, I answered the question, “Do links still matter for rankings?” by disavowing all links to a few blogs. Traffic and rankings fell, so yes, links still matter.

This time, I was curious if the importance of links had changed over time. I also was curious if we could segment the data to see when links matter more, and when they matter less.

Let’s dig in (after a huge thanks to our data scientist Xibeijia Guan for doing all the hard data parts of this study, and to our CMO Tim Soulo for his input).

Contents

Methodology and findings
Links matter more at higher search volumes
Brands get more links
Links correlate to rankings slightly less than they used to
Links matter a lot more for local queries
Links matter more for informational content

We selected the top 1,000,000 keywords with the most search volume from the US and calculated the Spearman correlation between their SERPs ranking (top 20) versus different SEO metrics, including:

Domain rating: 0.131
Number of backlinks: 0.248
Number of followed backlinks: 0.242
Number of refdomains: 0.255
Number of followed refdomains: 0.250
Number of internal inlinks: 0.117
Number of internal outlinks: 0.093
Number of external outlinks: 0.083
If keywords present in URL: 0.034
Length of URL: -0.107

I want to give all the normal warnings like Correlation ≠ Causation. These are generally considered weak correlations or even very weak correlations on the Spearman scale, but that doesn’t mean that these things aren’t important. There are a lot of ranking factors and links do play a role in your rankings.

Here are a few box plots to show the data visually for important metrics. In case you’re seeing box plots for the first time, here’s how you should read them:

The small lines on the edges represent the minimum and maximum values. And 50% of all values fall in the highlighted areas. The line in that area is the median value.

Generally, better link metrics = higher rankings.

If we break these down by search volume, we see that links correlate better for searches with higher search volumes.

I see 2 possible explanations, and there's probably some truth in both:

These queries are likely more competitive, and you may need links to move the needle for these competitive queries.
These pages get more exposure due to the higher volume, so higher-ranking sites may naturally get more links.

External links correlated better than incoming internal links. I was surprised at how big of a difference there was here. Links from other sites probably are weighted more or viewed as more credible than the links on your own site.

Links correlate better with branded searches than non-branded searches. But I don’t want people to interpret this as links matter more for brands. In my opinion, the correct way to interpret this is that due to the popularity of many brands, they tend to have more links. Their links and #1 rankings skew these results.

The other side of the equation here is that links correlate a little less with non-branded queries for the chart above, which would pull those numbers down a bit. This context is important for a historical comparison below.

We did a study back in 2019 that looked at some of the same correlations.

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.

Post byPatrick Stox

Patrick Stox is an independent SEO consultant. Former Product Advisor, Technical SEO, and Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. Before that he was a Technical SEO at IBM for many years, worked at an agency, had his own consultancy, and was in-house at a B2B company. A long time ago he started his career as a developer.

He’s an organizer for the Triangle SEO Meetup, the Tech SEO Connect conference, he runs a Technical SEO Slack group, and is a moderator for /r/TechSEO on Reddit.

Patrick was the lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac and reviewer for the 2022 chapter. He helped define the role of Search Marketing Strategist for the US Department of Labor. He also co-wrote the SEO Book For Beginners by Ahrefs and was the Technical Review Editor for The Art of SEO 4th Edition.

He’s spoken at 100+ industry events including Pubcon, SMX, Tech SEO Boost, Ad World, Digital Summit, and many more. He’s written 100+ articles for industry sites like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, MarTech, and right here at Ahrefs. He was a finalist for SEO Speaker of the Year and SEO Contributor of the Year at the 2018 Search Engine Land Awards. He was also an EzineArticles Platinum author back in the day and still has the mug to prove it.

Patrick has judged nearly a dozen search awards for multiple years including the US Search Awards, UK Search Awards, and Interactive Marketing Awards. He participated in and documented the world’s largest SEO contest to date, the Wix SEO Hero contest which he arguably should have won.

Contributors

Xibeijia Guan

Reviewed by