Google’s Gary Illyes provides further proof that links are less important now than they have ever been in SEO history.
At a recent search marketing conference, Gary Illyes, who works at Google, acknowledged that the company requires extremely few links to rank a page.
Gary Illyes Said About Links in 2024
Gary Illyes of Google said at a search conference in Bulgaria that Google doesn’t require many links and has made links less significant.
Pat Stox tweeted about the search conference discussion:
“We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.” @methode #serpconf2024″
That was confirmed by Google’s Gary Illyes on Twitter.
“I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that”
Google Confirms Links Are Not That Important
Gary Illyes of Google told PubCon Austin in 2023 that links were not in the top 3 ranking determinants. Along with the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google revised their spam policies guidelines to downplay link value for ranking.
Finally, Gary Illyes confirmed that Google ranks webpages with few links.
Why Google Doesn’t Need Links?
Because Google’s algorithms use AI and natural language understanding, they may not need many links. Google must trust their algorithm to declare they don’t need it.
Many link builders offered comment spam links and lied that they worked after Google imposed nofollow. I started link building at the beginning of modern SEO (I was the moderator of the link building forum at the #1 SEO forum at the time), and I can say with confidence that links stopped playing a big role in rankings several years ago, which is why I stopped five or six years ago.
