What happens when you lose a lot of links really quickly, how might that impact your Google search rankings and SEO performance? Well, John Mueller of Google was asked that question and after much back and forth, he responded, "SEOs often overestimate links."
The question came from Mehdi Oudjida who posted on Bluesky:
Does a strong & sudden drop in the number of backlinks / referring domains from authoritative sources still serve as a significant signal, and therefore for the authority of the affected site?Let’s imagine that all companies, media outlets, & individuals who decided to stop using a particular social network quickly remove all types of links to that network during the same period (hyperlinks, sharing features, embedded iframes displaying posts, etc.).
Mechanically, what would be the impact? A major organic hit or a minor slap?
John replied to that saying:
Is it a theoretical question? If it's a practical question, you can check if the links actually changed, or if it's just a matter of whatever reporting tool you're using (which is probably the case).
Mehdi replied:
It was more a tactical question. If you are an influent newspaper or advertiser, maybe your digital power is also important with your backlink history, in addition to where you spread the word.All the content creators should play with both at the same time, if the massive removal of backlinks is still listened. ...& if all would do that at the same time...it would be fair that the velocity of drop impacts even more how the SoMe is considered on Internet, so by the search engines.
Then John back with his John reply:
Why would any of those experience "a strong & sudden drop in the number of backlinks / referring domains from authoritative sources"? If anything, it feels like they were buying links. In a similar vein though, there's zyppy.com... if you're curious about what people tried out.
Mehdi goes back:
Removing massively links going to a social network domain, as a way to remove a proof of a former credit and trust, & so, hope organic consequences. An additional power combined with the deactivation of the SoMe account. Sure that most of website owners did half of the job.
To which we got John's statement on SEOs overestimating the value of links:
SEOs often overestimate links.
But yea, you'd expect some impact from a lot of links lost really quickly, wouldn't you?
That being said, the topic of Google valuing links less often is not new. Here are some stories on that topic over the past few years:
- Google On Why Important Links Might Not That Be Important Or Helpful
- Google: Over-Focusing On Links Is Likely A Waste Of Time
- Google: Links No Longer A Top Three Ranking Signal
- Google: Links Have A Lot Less Significant Impact For Ranking Today
- Google: Links Will Be Less Important As A Ranking Factor In The Future
- Google: Links Are Not The Most Important SEO Factor
- Google: We Still Use PageRank Internally
Forum discussion at Bluesky.
