Why links are important for Google

Someone asked at SEW whether links were really important for Google. I’ll repost my reply below:

Is the “Links Industry” aided and abetted by certain SEOs taking us for a ride?

In many cases any question on G ranking elicits the knee-jerk answer of “more links/anchor text” with no suggestion that on-page factors may be woefully inadequate.

Google is traditionally a links-driven search engine - PageRank is not primarily based on a site’s use of h tags, page title, or alt tags, but instead on the notion of “recommendations” from third-party sites in the form of links.

Whilst this concept originally provided Google will a clear competitive advantage in the earlier days of search, especially when other search engines were stewing in a mess of on-page factors, the evolution of search has shown that links in themselves are not all created equally.

Google has repeatedly tried to raise the bar on the worth of links, particularly by the creation of a core group of documents regarded as of especial importance, with all other recommendations following from them. Hilltop, LocalRank, and Trustrank, are all famous Google algorithms founded on this key issue of determining links of most worth from the rest.

With factors such as sandboxing in play, which delays the impact of text anchors for an indeterminate time, Google have created a market where not only are not all links are created equal, but also that the same links can be of different worth to different sites - not least because various parameters, such as prior history of a domain, can directly affect the impact of those links.

So, as an overall generalisation, to optimise for Google, links can be critical.

In the thread on cloaking Fantomaster had this to say:

“Sure, incoming links are quite critical to have, but there’s no doubt in our experience that they have been vastly overrated as well - at least, as far as cloaked pages are concerned.”

Certainly it would be unwise to ignore on-page factors. While links can be essential for targeting competitive rankings, the overall aim of any SEO method is to capture targeted traffic.

Cloaking is a speciality that, so far as I understand it, especially plays upon the various advantages of on-page factors - amongst other things - and so can help create a wider net to ensure that a wider volume can be captured than a links-only strategy.

So I see no contradiction there - simply a difference of focus.