Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that the number of links, for SEO purposes, is not a useful metric. He also said by the time you calculate all your links, that number has probably already changed - so it is not a good use of your time.
John wrote that "there is no way to measure the absolute number of external links a site has." He added that to count those external links is "theoretically impossible once a site has more than a handful of links." The numbers of links for large sites are constantly changing.
John then said "don't focus on the number of links, it's not a useful metric."
Here are those tweets:
There is no way to measure the absolute number of external links a site has - it's theoretically impossible once a site has more than a handful of links. Don't focus on the number of links, it's not a useful metric.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 15, 2021
In this case, when it comes to links, it is for sure quality over quantity. The old SEO days, quantity was pretty important, but that quickly changed in the early days of Google SEO tactics.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
