Google: Links Will Be Less Important As A Ranking Factor In The Future

Nov 4, 2022 - 7:21 am 46 by

Google Links Rope

Google has published on the Search Off The Record podcast, which was a recording from brightonSEO session, where John Mueller of Google said that he believes that over time, links as a ranking factor will be not as important and not as big as a ranking factor as it is today. In short, links won't be weighted as much as it is today in the future in Google's ranking algorithm.

John said at the 13:52 mark in the recording when asked about links "Well, it's something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links. At some point, will drop off a little bit as we can't figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web. And to some extent, links will always be something that we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It's like how do you find a page on the web without some reference to it?"

John then added "But my guess is over time, it won't be such a big factor as sometimes it is today. I think already, that's something that's been changing quite a bit."

Here is the recording if you want to listen yourself:

Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about 8 years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was 8 years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.

Here is Glenn Gabe's commentary on this:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Update Volatility May 16th

May 18, 2025 - 8:15 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 16, 2025

May 16, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Ads

Google's Pichai: Search Ads With AI Overviews Earn Same As Ads Without

May 16, 2025 - 8:50 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Rethinking Search, Replacing Reddit, Search Console Annotations & So Much More

May 16, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

Google Maps 2024: 999 Million Reviews & 752 Million Photos / Videos Published

May 16, 2025 - 7:51 am
Apple App Store

Apple Maps Adds Insights, Ratings & Reviews From More Sources

May 16, 2025 - 7:41 am
Previous Story: Google: Writing Content From Keyword Search Volume Lists Will Result In Mediocre Content