Google's John Mueller said again that having links to your site is not a requirement and not mandatory for ranking in Google Search. He said this back in 2015 as well, but said again in 2021 that links are not a requirement to rank.
Of course, if you want to rank for some obscure and not competitive term that no one is competing on, sure, you probably do not need links. But if you want to rank for [squid game toys] and stuff like that, you probably need some links.
Here is John Mueller's "nope" when asked if links are mandatory to rank in Google Search:
Nope
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) December 7, 2021
Last time John said something like this was in 2015 or so (he probably said it more than twice) and it caused a lot of rumbles throughout the SEO community.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
