{"id":184709,"date":"2025-01-30T06:01:52","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T11:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=184709"},"modified":"2025-03-17T06:08:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-17T11:08:48","slug":"links-matter-less-but-still-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/links-matter-less-but-still-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Says \u201cLinks Matter Less\u201d\u2014We Looked at 1,000,000 SERPs to See if It\u2019s True"},"content":{"rendered":"
Google has said links are less important than they used to be, and most SEOs have come to accept that as true. Our findings indicate that this is true overall, but for certain types of queries, links matter more.<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I still believe that links should be a part of your SEO strategy, but they shouldn\u2019t be your whole strategy. A while back, I answered the question, \u201cDo links still matter for rankings?\u201d<\/a> by disavowing all links to a few blogs. Traffic and rankings fell, so yes, links still matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"impact<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This time, I was curious if the importance of links had changed over time. I also was curious if we could segment the data to see when links matter more, and when they matter less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s dig in (after a huge thanks to our data scientist Xibeijia Guan<\/a> for doing all the hard data parts of this study, and to our CMO Tim Soulo<\/a> for his input).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contents<\/div><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n