Do backlinks still matter?

Backlinks still matter, and they matter less than they used to. That sounds like a dodge, but it is what the evidence shows. Google’s public statements have played links down since 2023. The data, and Google’s own internal documents shown in court, say links remain built into how pages are ranked.

This lesson sets out both sides with the numbers, so you can judge how much of your budget links deserve.

The case that links matter less

Google’s own people have said so, more than once.

• September 2023. Gary Illyes of Google, speaking at Pubcon: “I think they are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don’t agree it’s in the top three. It hasn’t been for some time.”
• March 2024. Google edited its documentation to describe links as “a factor” where it had said “an important factor”, as reported by Search Engine Land.
• April 2024. Illyes said Google needs “very few links” to rank pages.

The data points the same way. Ahrefs found that the correlation between referring domains and rankings for comparable queries fell from 0.27 in 2019 to between 0.22 and 0.24 in 2024.

There is also a reason for the decline. Testimony in the US antitrust case confirmed that Google uses click data heavily. A system called Navboost works on 13 months of clicks, and Google’s Pandu Nayak called it “one of the important signals”. Machine learning systems share the load too. Links are now one input among several strong ones.

The case that links still matter

The correlation is still there. Ahrefs studied one million US keywords and published the results in January 2025.

Measure	Correlation with rankings
Referring domains	0.255
Followed referring domains	0.250
Backlinks	0.248
Domain Rating	0.131

These are modest numbers, and they have fallen only slightly. A correlation is not proof of cause, because pages that rank also attract links. But no other off-page measure in the study did better.

Links are built into Google’s ranking. An exhibit from the antitrust case, reported in May 2025, describes the structure. Topical relevance is built from three signals: anchors, body text and clicks. Site quality, which the exhibit calls “incredibly important”, takes PageRank as an input, and PageRank is described as “a single signal relating to distance from a known good source”. Links therefore act in both halves of the system.

Google keeps fighting link spam. Its spam policies were last updated in August 2026 and still open with a detailed list of link schemes. In August 2026 Google said link spam is “handled by separate systems” from its general spam updates. A company does not maintain a separate system for a signal that no longer counts.

The market is still paying. SEOs put the acceptable price of a quality link at about $509 on average, according to a March 2026 survey of 518 SEOs by Editorial.link. BuzzStream’s 2026 State of Digital PR report found that the share of digital PR teams spending more than $20,000 a month doubled to 8.8%. In a Zyppy survey of 131 SEOs, reported second-hand and so less certain, 54.8% placed backlinks among the top three factors.

Where links matter most and least

The Ahrefs study broke the correlation down by type of query. It was stronger for local queries, at 0.33, and for high-volume, branded and informational queries. It was weaker for commercial and transactional queries.

That last finding surprises people, because commercial pages are where most link budgets go. One likely explanation is that few sites link to product and category pages naturally, so other signals carry more of the weight on those results. It does not mean links are useless for commercial pages. It means you should not expect a simple line between link counts and positions there.

How both sides can be right

The court documents settle the argument. Links are still wired into Google through anchors and PageRank. Click data and machine learning now do part of the job links once did alone. “Links matter less” and “links still matter” are both accurate.

Illyes’ “very few links” comment fits this too. A page needs enough links to be found and trusted. Beyond that point, in many markets, more links add little. In the hardest markets, where every competitor has good content and a fast site, that point sits much higher.

What has changed most is which links count. Google says its systems neutralise links they consider manipulative, so the cheap, off-topic link bought in bulk is the one losing value fastest. An editorial link from a relevant publication has not lost value in the same way.

Links and AI assistants

AI assistants add a second reason to earn coverage. In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, published in 2025, the number of times a brand was mentioned across the web correlated with its visibility in Google’s AI Overviews at 0.664. Domain Rating came in at 0.326 and the raw number of backlinks at 0.218.

Read that with care. It compares correlations and does not show cause. Large brands have more of everything. And links do not drop out of the picture: links whose anchor text is the brand name correlated at 0.527, and a separate study by Seer Interactive found that Google rankings, which depend partly on links, were a strong predictor of mentions in AI answers.

The practical reading is that a link inside real coverage now pays twice, once for rankings and once as a mention. Brand mentions and citations covers that side.

What this means for your budget

• Check the page before the links. If your page does not match what searchers want, links will not fix it.
• Measure the gap. Count referring domains to the pages that rank for your target term and compare them with yours. That tells you whether links are your problem.
• Buy fewer, better. One link from a relevant, read publication beats many from sites that exist to sell links.
• Count mentions as a result. Coverage with no link, or with a nofollow link, still has value.

Where to go next

See the tactics chart for what each way of earning links costs and risks. If you are starting from zero, your first 100 links puts the tactics in order.