The Role of Backlinks in Google’s Search Ranking (2024–2026)

Backlinks – hyperlinks from one website to another – have long been considered “votes of confidence” for content on the web. Google’s original PageRank algorithm (late 1990s) leveraged backlinks as a core signal of a page’s authority and relevance. Over time, Google’s ranking system has become far more complex, but backlinks remain a key factor. In 2024/2026, their role is evolving: Google is refining how it evaluates links (to combat spam and emphasize quality), and other factors like content quality and user experience have taken center stage.

This report comprehensively analyzes how backlinks influence Google’s rankings today, recent algorithm changes in link evaluation, best practices for link-building, a comparison of backlinks vs. other ranking factors, and the future outlook for backlink signals.

 

---

 

1. Google’s Evolving Algorithm: Recent Updates & Backlink Evaluation

Google has introduced several updates and public changes in the last couple of years that downplay the influence of backlinks – or rather, make link signals more about quality than quantity. Notably, Google’s own representatives have signaled a shift:

Google’s Gary Illyes indicated at a 2024 search conference that the algorithm now needs very few backlinks to rank pages, having “made links less important” over the years. He later half-jokingly walked back the remark on social media (above), but it aligns with a broader trend of Google de-emphasizing links as other ranking signals improve.

Official Statements on Link Importance: 

In 2023, Google search analyst Gary Illyes revealed that backlinks are no longer among Google’s top three ranking factors. “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,” Illyes said, clarifying that while links still count, their relative weight is less than before.

Then in early 2024, at SERPConf, Illyes added: “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”. This remark caused a stir, and Illyes later tweeted, “I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that,” implying he may have spoken too candidly. Nonetheless, the message was clear – Google is much less reliant on backlinks than it used to be.

Similarly, Google’s John Mueller has repeatedly advised SEOs not to obsess over link building. In April 2024 he wrote that “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.”. In essence, Google wants site owners to prioritize content quality, usability, and other improvements over aggressive link-chasing.

Documentation Changes: 

Reinforcing this stance, Google quietly updated its Search Central documentation in March 2024 to downplay backlinks. The docs formerly stated that “Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.” After the update, they read: “Google uses links as a factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.” – notably removing the word “important.”. This subtle edit in official guidelines underscores that Google no longer highlights backlinks as a singularly critical factor (as it might have been a decade ago). Links are now described as just one of many signals.

Algorithm Updates Targeting Link Spam: 

Google’s core ranking algorithm has incorporated advanced spam-fighting measures to neutralize manipulative backlinks. In late 2022, Google rolled out a “Link Spam Update” powered by its AI-based SpamBrain system to automatically detect and nullify unnatural links. Google said it “leverag[es] the power of SpamBrain to neutralize the impact of unnatural links on search results.” This means if a site was buying links or participating in link schemes, those links simply won’t count (or could even trigger penalties). By 2023, Google’s systems could algorithmically identify most spam links, reducing the need for manual disavow interventions in many cases.

In March 2024, Google launched a core update alongside new spam policies specifically against “site reputation manipulation” and “expired domain abuse.” These terms refer to tactics like parasitic link-building (hosting content on someone else’s high-authority domain to piggyback on its link equity) or buying up expired domains with strong backlinks to redirect or publish new content. Google’s updated policy makes it clear such shortcuts will not be rewarded. “Google is cracking down on… practices like expired domain abuse, scaled content creation abuse, and site reputation manipulation,” noted one analysis of the March 2024 update.

The goal: strip away the advantages of illegitimately obtained links, forcing SEO efforts to focus on genuine quality.

Integrated “Penguin” and Continuous Algorithmic Filtering: 

Even prior to these recent updates, Google’s algorithms (e.g. the Penguin update, now part of core) have for years been discounting spammy links and demoting sites caught engaging in link schemes. What’s different now is Google’s confidence in ignoring bad links in real-time. This minimizes the impact of link spam on rankings. As a result, the sites that benefit from backlinks are those acquiring them naturally (or at least, in accordance with guidelines). Backlinks in 2024 are very much a “quality over quantity” factor by algorithm design.

Key Takeaways – Recent Changes to Backlink Evaluation:

• Google’s messaging (via staff comments and documentation) indicates that backlinks carry less ranking weight than they did in the past, relative to signals like content relevance and quality. They are still part of the algorithm, but not a “top 3” factor according to Googlers in 2023.
  
  

• Algorithmic updates (2022–2024) have aggressively targeted link spam, using AI to neutralize paid or manipulative links. Google is effectively ignoring a large swath of low-quality backlinks that used to influence rankings, thereby raising the bar for what kinds of backlinks count.
  
  

• New spam policies (2024) penalize attempts to game link-based authority (e.g. using expired domains or hosting content on high-authority sites purely to boost SEO). This reflects Google’s continued crackdown on any form of “unnatural” link advantage.
  
  

• Google encourages SEOs to focus on content and user experience rather than chasing links. Over-focusing on backlink tactics at the expense of your website’s value is explicitly discouraged and is regarded as an inefficient SEO investment.

2. Backlinks in 2024/2025: Current Influence on Google Rankings

Backlinks continue to correlate strongly with higher Google rankings. Studies show that the #1 search result typically has significantly more inbound links (on average 3.8× as many) than the sites ranked #2–#10 on the same page. (sources: editorial.link, semrush.com)

Backlinks as a Ranking Signal: Google itself confirms that it “uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages” - Link Best Practices for Google

In practice, backlinks pass authority to your pages – generally, a page linked by many trusted, high-quality websites is more likely to rank well than one with few or poor-quality links. Recent industry data backs this up: an analysis by Semrush found that 92% of top-ranking pages had at least one external backlink, and pages with the most total backlinks tended to rank best. In fact, the top result in Google has 3.8 times more backlinks on average than the pages in positions #2–#10. This reflects a longstanding pattern where “pages with lots of backlinks rank above pages that don’t have as many”.

Quality Over Quantity: It’s not just a numbers game. Google values relevance and quality in backlink profiles. A few authoritative links from relevant sites will boost rankings more than hundreds of low-quality or unrelated links. Not all backlinks carry the same weight – for example, links from pages that are topically irrelevant to your site are often ignored by Google and thus “aren’t likely to improve your SERP performance”. 

Link authority also matters at the domain level: well-established “trusted” domains confer more authority via their links. This creates a competitive moat for big sites – large publishers like Forbes or WebMD inherently rank well partly because their domain backlink profiles are so strong, making Google “trust” their content more. Smaller sites can outrank big domains with superior content, but it’s challenging without comparable link equity.

Diminishing Returns on Manipulative Links: Over the years, Google has become adept at detecting and discounting spammy or artificial links. Tactics like link farms, purchased links, or non-editorial blog comments are largely filtered out by Google’s algorithms. In other words, backlinks still matter, but only if they are the kind Google considers natural and meritorious. Simply amassing a huge quantity of links through questionable schemes won’t help (and can hurt if it leads to manual penalties). 

Modern SEO studies affirm this nuanced picture – one 2024 analysis noted that “generally, better link metrics = higher rankings”, but also cautioned that correlations are weaker than in the past because Google ignores low-quality signals. The takeaway for 2024: backlinks remain a foundational ranking factor, yet their influence is now highly dependent on quality, relevance, and Google’s trust in those links.

3. Backlinks vs. Other Ranking Factors: Importance Comparison

With Google emphasizing “holistic” ranking signals, it’s important to understand how backlinks stack up against other major factors like content quality, user experience, and site speed. The table below compares these factors in terms of their roles and relative importance in Google’s current algorithm:

Content vs. Backlinks: If we simplify, content and backlinks are the two most influential broad factors in SEO. There’s often a debate which is “more important,” but in reality you need both – they work in tandem. As Google’s algorithms have advanced, content relevance/quality has taken the lead as the foremost ranking factor (Google’s own search quality raters and updates stress content much more now). “Content is king” remains true. A page must satisfy the query intent and provide value; if not, no amount of backlinks will keep it ranking for long (especially with user engagement signals factored in).

However, when multiple pages all have great content, backlinks are often the tiebreaker. Backlinks provide the authority signal that can elevate one high-quality page over another. In competitive niches where everyone has decent content, the site with a stronger backlink profile typically wins out. In fact, recent data shows “content relevancy and quality” correlate highly with better rankings – and that “earning backlinks from unique domains is still important, both at page and domain level.”. So, while content might come first, backlinks remain a close second among ranking inputs.

Backlinks vs. UX/Speed: User experience and speed are vital for retaining traffic and converting visitors, but their direct ranking influence is comparatively smaller. Google did roll out the Page Experience Update (2021) giving a minor boost to sites meeting Core Web Vitals, but in 2024 Google clarified it as more of a lightweight signal. 

A slow or clunky site can hurt your SEO indirectly – users may bounce and not engage, which could signal to Google that your page wasn’t satisfying. But if your content is highly relevant and you have authoritative backlinks, you can often still rank despite mediocre speed or UX (not that it’s recommended to neglect these!). On the other hand, a fast, user-friendly site won’t rank with an empty or irrelevant page just because it’s fast. Content and links outweigh pure UX in the ranking algorithm, as long as UX is reasonably within standards.

To illustrate, in Google’s own weighting (though not explicitly published), one might think of it this way: Content relevance is the first filter (a page must be about what the user is searching). Backlinks and authority then help establish which relevant pages are most trustworthy/important. UX factors like mobile-friendliness and speed then refine results in cases where many pages are similar in content/authority. This aligns with Google’s advice: ensure great content first, get reputable backlinks second, and don’t ignore UX but treat it as a polish to an already solid page. Indeed, the “fundamentals of SEO remain largely unchanged: high-quality content and [backlinks] reign supreme,” as a 2024 ranking factors study summarized

4. Best Practices for Effective Backlinks in SEO (2024)

Given the above, the optimal backlink strategy in 2024/2025 is one that prioritizes organic, high-quality link acquisition and steers well clear of spammy shortcuts. Here are best practices to ensure your backlinks help (and not hurt) your search rankings:

• Create Link-Worthy Content: The foundation of earning good backlinks is publishing high-quality, useful content. Content that offers unique value – in-depth research, original data, expert insights, infographics, tools, etc. – is naturally more likely to attract backlinks from other sites. Google’s helpful content guidelines emphasize making pages that serve users first, which in turn makes other webmasters more willing to cite or reference your work. In 2025 and beyond, content and backlinks work hand-in-hand: great content earns backlinks, and backlinks amplify the reach of content. Invest in content that people want to link to (because it’s informative, entertaining, or authoritative).
  
  

• Earn Relevant, Authoritative Links: Focus your link-building efforts on obtaining links from websites that are topically relevant to your own and have a good reputation. For example, if you run a tech blog, a link from a well-known tech news site or a respected programming forum carries a lot of weight. Such links act as a strong endorsement. “One high-quality link from a trusted, relevant site can do more for your rankings than dozens of low-quality links,” as one 2025 SEO guide noted. 

Strategies to earn these links include digital PR (public relations) – e.g. getting your business mentioned in news articles or industry round-ups, guest posting on reputable sites with valuable contributions (not shallow posts on random blogs), thought leadership (publishing research or opinion pieces that others cite), and networking in your niche. Building genuine relationships with other site owners and influencers can open opportunities for guest collaborations or natural mentions.

• Avoid Link Schemes and Spam: It’s crucial to stay within Google’s Webmaster Guidelines regarding links. Any attempt to buy, sell, or artificially manipulate backlinks can backfire. Google’s spam policy explicitly considers “buying or selling links that pass PageRank” a violation, as well as excessive link exchanges or networks of sites cross-linking solely to boost SEO.
  
  In practice, spammy links are now largely ignored by Google’s algorithms, so at best they do nothing for you; at worst, they could trigger a manual penalty if you egregiously violate the rules. Avoid practices like: paying for links on random sites, using automated programs to generate links, stuffing forum comments or blog comments with links, submitting to low-quality directories or article farms, or building “private blog networks” (PBNs) of interlinked sites. These tactics might have worked 10+ years ago, but today Google will filter them out or even apply ranking demotions.
  
  A 2025 SEO case noted that even links from very high-authority sites (e.g. a DR90+ news site) did not help – and in fact hurt – when the link’s anchor text and context were irrelevant to the linked site. The lesson: don’t chase backlinks that don’t make contextual sense; Google likely ignores or distrusts them.
  
  

• Optimize Anchor Text Naturally: When you do earn backlinks, the clickable anchor text used in the link should ideally be relevant to your page – but avoid over-optimization. It looks spammy to Google if dozens of sites link to you with the exact same keyword-rich anchor (this was a common manipulative tactic in the past). Instead, aim for a natural mix of anchor texts: some with your brand name, some with descriptive phrases or page titles, some with generic text (“click here”), etc. 

You often can’t fully control how others link to you, but if you’re doing outreach or guest content, ensure the anchor text makes sense in context and isn’t forced. Google uses anchor text as a clue to page content, so descriptive anchors can help – just don’t overdo the exact-match keywords.

• Leverage Internal Linking: While our focus is on external backlinks, don’t forget internal links (links between pages on your own site) as part of your SEO strategy. Internal links don’t boost authority the way external ones do, but they help distribute the link equity your pages have earned and improve crawlability. A logical internal linking structure ensures that your important content is easily accessible to both users and Google’s crawler. Use meaningful anchor text for internal links as well, and link related content together. This not only aids SEO but also enhances user experience by guiding readers to relevant info. (For example, an e-commerce product page might link to a review or a how-to guide on your site, and vice versa.)
  
  

• Monitor Your Backlink Profile: Regularly audit your site’s backlink profile using tools (Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, etc.). Look for any toxic or spam links that you didn’t build – nowadays Google is pretty good at ignoring these, so you typically don’t need to disavow random spam links. However, if you have a history of artificial link building or notice a pattern of potentially harmful links (e.g. from link networks or overly optimized anchor text from past SEO work), you might consider using Google’s disavow tool to tell Google to ignore those. Google’s official stance is that disavowing is rarely necessary unless you have a manual penalty or clear evidence of bad SEO practices in your past.

In general, a healthy backlink profile will have a variety of organic links. Keep an eye on new links and remove or disavow only if something looks blatantly manipulative and is not being filtered automatically.

• Patience and Consistency: Building a strong backlink profile is a long-term effort. It often takes months to organically earn quality links. Be wary of any service or offer that promises hundreds of backlinks overnight – if it sounds too good to be true, it likely violates Google’s guidelines. Instead, incorporate link-building as an ongoing part of your content marketing: every piece of great content is an opportunity to reach out (e.g. via email outreach or social promotion) to relevant sites that might find it worth linking. Over time, as your site’s authority grows, you may attract links more naturally without as much outreach. The key is consistency and focusing on real value creation.
  
  

Summary: The best practice for backlinks in 2024 is to treat them as an outcome of good SEO rather than the sole focus. Earn backlinks by creating something link-worthy and promoting it through legitimate means. When actively building links, do it in ways that aligns with user value (e.g. guest posting an excellent article on a relevant authoritative blog, which benefits their readers as well as gives you a link). By adhering to quality-driven tactics, your backlink profile will improve in a way that Google rewards – bolstering your rankings safely over the long run.

5. Future Outlook: The Evolving Impact of Backlinks on Search Rankings

Looking ahead, how might the role of backlinks change in Google’s algorithm? There is consensus on certain trends and some debate on others. Backlinks are at a crossroads of evolution: Google’s aim is to reward the most relevant, reliable content – and backlinks are one tool to gauge reliability, but not the only tool. Here are some expert predictions and emerging trends that shed light on the future of backlink signals:

• Continued Decline in Relative Weight: Google will likely keep dialing down the emphasis on raw link popularity as its algorithms get better at understanding content and user satisfaction. We’ve already seen backlinks drop from a top 3 factor to a lower rung in Google’s eyes. It’s reasonable to expect that trend to continue. 

Future ranking systems (bolstered by AI) might rely more on semantic analysis, topical authority, and user engagement metrics to decide rankings – reducing the need to use backlink count as a proxy for quality. Google’s John Mueller suggested that “over time, the weight on the links… will drop off a little bit”, hinting that each year links could count slightly less as other signals improve. We may never get to a point where backlinks are meaningless (they will likely always provide value as citations), but their dominance as the defining factor will probably continue to erode, especially for content where quality and credibility can be assessed in other ways.

• Higher Standards for “Good” Links: Even if links count somewhat less, Google will undoubtedly keep raising the bar for link quality. Low-value links are already largely ignored, and that filter will only get stricter. The links that will matter in the future are those that truly indicate an endorsement: e.g. a major news outlet or a scholarly source linking to you, or many real users/bloggers organically sharing your site because it’s genuinely useful. 

As one SEO observer put it, “the bar for what counts as a ‘good link’ keeps rising.”. We can expect Google to incorporate even more context in evaluating links: understanding why one page is linking to another. For example, if a link is embedded in an editorial article discussing “top 10 tools for X” and your site is one of them, that’s a positive signal. If a link is stuck in a footer or part of a list of unrelated sites, it might be discounted. Contextual, editorially-earned backlinks will be the gold standard going forward.

• Integration of “Linkless” Mentions and Brand Signals: A notable emerging idea is that search engines (Google included) can infer reputation not just from explicit hyperlinks, but also from unlinked brand mentions. In fact, Bing’s representatives confirmed years ago that Bing uses unlinked mentions of a brand as a ranking signal. For Google, there have been patents and speculation suggesting they might do the same.

By 2025, some SEO experts believe “Google now appears to weigh ‘linkless mentions’ as a ranking signal too” – meaning if authoritative sites or sources mention your brand or website name without linking, Google could count that as an implied endorsement. While Google hasn’t officially announced this, it fits into the broader pattern of evaluating online reputation. Similarly, the rise of entity-based search (Google understanding entities like people, organizations, brands and their related content) could diminish the reliance on literal link graphs. 

If Google’s Knowledge Graph is confident that your brand is an authority in a certain domain, every piece of content from you might rank more easily, even with fewer backlinks, because Google “knows” your brand is trusted. This is speculative, but it’s a direction many foresee – essentially Google getting better at assessing authority through connections and mentions that aren’t limited to clickable links.

• Backlinks as a Differentiator in an AI-Content World: On the flip side, there’s an argument that backlinks will remain crucial as a differentiator, especially as content creation is increasingly aided by AI. With generative AI, tons of websites can produce “decent” content at scale. If everyone has similar content quality, how will Google decide who ranks on top? Likely by looking at who has the greater authority and trust signals – which includes backlinks. 

A Forbes 2025 council article posited that when most content meets a baseline quality, “backlinks become the deciding factor for SEO success.”. In other words, backlinks may regain relative importance as a way to separate the wheat from the chaff in a world flooded with AI-generated pages. Moreover, as AI content farms proliferate, Google will lean on signals of human validation. 

Backlinks (from reputable human-curated sites) could be a key indicator that a piece of content is valued by real people, not just pumped out by algorithms. So while Google will fight link spam, genuine backlinks might become even more prized. SEOs in the future might focus on “high-value link building” via relationships and unique research, because those links could be the hardest thing for AI content mills to obtain.

• Influence of AI and Machine Learning on Link Analysis: Google’s AI advancements won’t just impact content understanding; they also can make link analysis more sophisticated. We can expect Google’s algorithms to get even better at interpreting links in context. For example, using machine learning to identify patterns of unnatural linking (beyond simple rules) and to understand a linking site’s credibility in a nuanced way. 

SpamBrain (the AI that catches link spam) will continue to evolve. Perhaps Google could train models on huge amounts of link data to predict which links truly confer authority and which are noise. This could also tie into detecting fake outreach or “planted” links even when they appear in articles – e.g. if a bunch of sites suddenly all link with the same paragraph of text, ML systems might flag that as coordinated. Emerging tech will make Google’s link signal more about quality and relevance than ever.

• No Immediate “Death of Backlinks”: Despite changes, most experts agree backlinks aren’t going away in the foreseeable future. They’ve been foundational to how the web works (hyperlinks are the web’s connective tissue), and they remain a reliable indicator of inter-site recommendation. What is likely is that backlinks will be used in combination with other signals to paint a more complete picture of authority. Google will likely down-weigh backlinks in areas where they’ve proven unreliable (like easily spammed niches), but might up-weigh them in areas where they signify true editorial consensus. As SEO veteran Rand Fishkin once noted: “as long as people seek information from other people, linking will be a way of vouching for information – but the signals of trust might expand to things like author reputation, citations, and user sentiment.”
  
  

In practical terms, SEO strategies for the future should still include backlinks as a key component, but with an ever-greater emphasis on quality, relevance, and authenticity. Techniques like getting a mention in real press, contributing guest content to high-authority publications, sponsoring or being cited in industry research, and fostering community discussions (where your brand is talked about and linked) will be invaluable. Conversely, any shortcut or grey-hat scheme will be even less effective down the road.

 

---

 

Conclusion

Backlinks in 2024–2025 remain a powerful signal in Google’s ranking algorithm – but their role is more refined and balanced than in the early days of SEO. A current overview shows they undeniably influence rankings (top-ranking pages have robust backlink profiles), yet Google’s recent algorithm updates and statements demonstrate a clear move toward prioritizing content quality and filtering out link manipulation. 

The best practice today is to earn backlinks by making your site link-worthy and engaging in ethical SEO and marketing tactics. When comparing ranking factors, content quality edges out backlinks as the prime factor, with user experience and speed contributing in supporting roles. 

Looking to the future, expect Google to further hone how it evaluates backlinks: rewarding only the most meaningful links, possibly counting brand mentions, and adjusting weightings as the internet landscape changes. For SEO practitioners and website owners, the guiding principle should be: focus on great content and great user experience first, and pursue backlinks as a means of amplifying that greatness – not as an end in itself. Such a holistic approach will ensure your SEO remains resilient no matter how Google’s algorithm evolves.

 

---

 

Sources (hover over text to explore):

• Google Search Central Documentation – “Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages…” ; SEO Link Best Practices (2025)
  
  

• Semrush, SEO Statistics 2023 – Backlink statistics (92% of top domains have backlinks; pages with more backlinks rank higher)
  
  

• SearchEngineJournal (Roger Montti, Apr 2024) – Google downplaying links; John Mueller on over-focusing on links

• Google’s Gary Illyes at PubCon/Austin 2023 and SERPConf 2024 – Backlinks “not in top 3” and “very few links to rank pages…”
  
  

• Google March 2024 Core Update and Spam Policies – Crackdown on link spam (site reputation manipulation, etc.)

• Google Search Central (Dec 2022) – Announcement of AI-based SpamBrain to neutralize unnatural links
  
  

• Editorial.Link (D. Sokhach, 2025) – “Backlinks remain one of the key ranking factors… link volume doesn’t have as much impact as quality.” ; Not all links equal (spam/irrelevant ignored)
  
  

• Ahrefs Research (Patrick Stox, 2025) – Links still matter (disavowing links caused rankings to fall) ; correlation of backlinks with rankings
  
  

• Eleven Writing – Semrush 2024 Ranking Factors Study takeaways: content is king, backlinks and content are fundamental, speed is minor
  
  

• Forbes Council (via LinkedIn post, Feb 2025) – “When everyone’s creating decent content, backlinks become the deciding factor… the bar for a ‘good link’ keeps rising.”
  
  

• Backlinko (Brian Dean) study – Pages in #1 have 3.8× more backlinks than those in #2–#10 (illustrated above)
  
  

• Search Engine Land (Oct 2023) – “8 of the top 20 ranking signals were related to backlinks” (2024 report)(indicating links remain significant)
  
  

• AI and SEO future discussions – Speculation on linkless mentions as signals and expert opinions on 2025 trends
  
  .