Are Links Dead? Our 2021 Verdict + What's Changed in 2026

Back in late 2020, we published an infographic answering a question that gets asked roughly once a year, every year, since around 2010: are links dead?

Our answer then was no. Five years later, the answer is still no. The original infographic from that piece is preserved below, and most of what it said still holds — Google's top organic result still has more referring domains than results further down the page, the link schemes Google penalized then still get penalized now, and the principle that hard-to-get links are worth more than easy-to-get ones is as true today as when Paddy Moogan first said it.

What has changed is the surrounding context. Specifically: a new ranking surface called AI Overviews, and a separate optimization target called LLM citations, have appeared since the original piece ran. On those surfaces, brand mentions now correlate with visibility three times more strongly than backlinks do.

Links aren't dead. They just got demoted.

This is the 2026 update to our 2021 verdict.

What We Said in 2021 (Still Holds Up)

The original infographic — embedded in full below — made the following claims, all of which remain accurate in 2026:

• An overwhelming majority of websites have zero external backlinks. The "94% of all web content has no external backlinks" stat from the original infographic is still roughly accurate. Most of the open web is effectively orphaned from a link perspective.

• Quality of links beats quantity. Always has. Always will.

• Anchor text matters, but exact-match keyword stuffing in anchor text gets penalized. The over-optimization penalty hasn't softened.

• The follow vs. nofollow distinction is still real, though Google's 2019 reclassification of nofollow as a "hint" rather than a "directive" means nofollow links can still pass some weight in practice.

• Body links carry more weight than footer or sidebar links. Click-likelihood is a signal.

• Domain trust, link diversity, and topical relevance are the three pillars of a good link profile.

Rodney Brazil left a comment on the original article in December 2020 that captured the right read in one sentence: "The emphasis should be on trust, diversity, and relevance. If the link doesn't truly help the user, it won't help your page ranking, either."

That comment is more correct in 2026 than it was when he wrote it. Trust, diversity, and relevance describe almost exactly what AI systems are now looking for when deciding which brands to cite. The infographic was directionally right. The commenter was even more right.

The Original 2021 Infographic

The infographic covers what mattered for link quality at the time: anchor text, URL factors, clickability, follow vs. nofollow, page placement, technical factors (Core Web Vitals, AMP, E-A-T), and how to build a better link profile through trust, diversity, and relevance.

Most of it still applies. The parts that need updating are below.

What Changed Since 2021

Three things, in order of importance.

1. AI Overviews Entered the SERP and Started Intercepting Clicks Before Users See Any Link

When Google rolled out AI Overviews broadly in May 2024, the click economy that had supported the open web since the mid-2000s started cracking. A December 2025 Ahrefs analysis of 300,000 keywords found that pages ranking #1 on queries with an AI Overview get 58% fewer clicks than equivalent queries without one. SparkToro's 2024 clickstream analysis with Datos found that of every 1,000 US Google searches, only 360 now produce a click to the open web. The rest end on Google itself.

This matters for link strategy because the math of "earn a link, drive a ranking, capture the traffic" now leaks at the last step. You can still earn the link. You can still drive the ranking. But the traffic the ranking used to produce is increasingly being captured by Google's AI summary above your result.

2. Brand Mentions Now Beat Backlinks 3:1 for AI Visibility

This is the single most important data point for anyone who built a link strategy before 2024. In May 2025, Ahrefs analyzed 75,000 brands to measure which signals correlate with appearing in AI Overviews. The results inverted the link-centric thinking that has dominated SEO for the last two decades.

The strongest correlations with AI Overview brand visibility:

• Branded web mentions: 0.664

• Branded anchors: 0.527

• Branded search volume: 0.392

• Backlinks: 0.218

Brand mentions outperformed backlinks by roughly 3:1. A separate Muck Rack analysis of over one million AI-cited links found that 82% of citations come from earned media — third-party editorial coverage from credible publications, not owned content or paid placements. A Yext analysis of 6.8 million AI citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity found that 86% of citations come from brand-controlled sources like websites and listings.

The signal AI systems follow isn't the link graph. It's the brand graph. If you appear consistently across credible sources in your category — linked or unlinked — AI systems learn to trust your brand. If you only show up on your own site with a lot of inbound links and minimal external mentions, you get less weight than you used to.

3. Most Link-Building Tactics From the 2010-2021 Era Are Now Actively Harmful

This is the change operators are slowest to accept. The tactics that produced links in volume from 2010 through 2021 — guest post networks, private blog network buys, expired domain redirects, link exchanges, mass directory submissions, comment links, widget-embedded links, niche-edit purchases — are variously dead, deindexed, or actively penalized by Google's link spam updates from December 2022 onward.

The December 2022 link spam update specifically used Google's SpamBrain AI system to detect unnatural link patterns at scale. The March 2024 core update and subsequent spam updates extended that capability. A link-building budget spent on any of those tactics in 2026 is worse than wasted. It's actively hurting the site.

Links for Google vs. Links for AI

These are now two separate optimization targets, and the same activity rarely produces equal value on both.

For Google's traditional blue-link rankings, backlinks still matter. The May 2024 Google leaks confirmed what experienced SEOs had assumed — PageRank-style signals are still in active use, and link-based authority still influences rankings. A site with strong referring domains in its niche still has an advantage over one without.

For AI Overview citations, ChatGPT mentions, Perplexity references, and Gemini answers, the priority order is different. The systems are looking for brand co-occurrence across credible sources, structured content they can extract cleanly, schema markup that identifies entities, and consistency of brand positioning across the web. Links are part of that picture. They are no longer the dominant signal.

Strategically, this means a 2026 link program should produce both — a placement that earns a link AND an unlinked brand mention from the same activity. A guest post that only gets you a backlink in the author bio is now worth half what it used to be. A feature in a trade publication that mentions your brand by name four times and links once is worth more than four guest posts on lower-tier sites.

The New Hierarchy of Off-Site Signals

Order of importance for AI visibility, based on the 2025-2026 research:

1. Brand web mentions. Being talked about by name across credible publications, podcasts, forums, and trade media. Linked or unlinked. The volume and contextual quality of mentions is the strongest signal we have data on.

2. Branded anchor text. When you do get links, your brand name appearing in or near the anchor signals to AI systems that the link is editorial and intentional.

3. Branded search volume. When people search for your brand name directly, that's a downstream signal of category recognition. Building searchable brand awareness now feeds AI visibility.

4. Co-occurrence with category entities. Your brand appearing in contexts that also mention your category, your competitors, and your relevant tools or standards. This builds entity association inside the AI systems.

5. Backlinks from topically relevant, high-authority sources. Still matter, but with topical relevance now weighted more heavily than raw authority. A DR 30 niche blog can outweigh a DR 90 generalist site for the right query.

6. Backlinks generally. Still a positive signal. Still help with rankings. No longer the headline.