Links built Google. Meaning, quality and answers now decide what a link is worth.

Because Google was built on them. In 1998, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page presented a search engine that used the link structure of the web, with PageRank measuring a page's citation importance. A link counted as a recommendation from one page to another.

PageRank is a measure of a page's importance calculated from the links pointing to it and the importance of the pages they come from. It borrowed the logic of academic citation. It made the web's own structure a ranking signal.

Once links counted as votes, people began to manufacture them: directories, link exchanges, paid links and networks of sites. Rankings became something that could be bought. Google had to learn to tell real recommendations from purchased ones.

Google introduced the rel="nofollow" attribute in January 2005, with support from Yahoo! and MSN Search, so that links carrying it receive no ranking credit. It was first aimed at comment spam. It later became the standard way to mark links that should not pass a vote.

In April 2012, Google announced an algorithm change against webspam, later known as Penguin, that affected about 3.1 % of English queries noticeably. It targeted manipulative link schemes. After it, bought links could cost rankings.

If links alone lifted a page, bought links would keep paying off. Google reports catching most of them and states that the credit they pass is lost.

Meaning and quality. Google introduced the Knowledge Graph in 2012, applied RankBrain in 2015 and BERT in 2019, and made its helpful content system part of the core ranking systems in March 2024. Understanding what a page says became as important as who points to it.

Yes, as one signal among many. A link from a relevant, trusted source still tells a search system that others vouch for a page. Many links from irrelevant places tell it little, or the wrong thing.

Relevance of the linking page, genuine editorial choice, and a reason for the link that serves the reader. A link that would exist without SEO is worth more than one that exists because of it. Such links follow from content worth citing.

Pages that restate what everybody says give nobody a reason to link. Pages that answer what others leave open, or add figures nobody else has, become the source others cite. Links follow the blue ocean.

Generative engines cite sources in their answers, and those citations are a new kind of recommendation. Research on generative engine optimisation found that adding quotations and statistics raised a source's visibility in generated answers. Being cited now matters alongside being linked.

Stop buying them and start deserving them. Publish what the field is missing, state it with evidence, and make it easy to cite. The links that come from that work carry the weight that bought links lost.