What Still Works in Link Building?
The links that work are the ones Google can read as a relevance signal. They come from sites with real readers and a related topic, and they use descriptive anchor text. AI search has given more weight to brand mentions, which showed the strongest correlation with appearing in Google's AI Overviews in a study of 75,000 brands.
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In this article
What still works in link building is a link Google can read as a relevance signal: one placed on a site with real readers and a topic close to yours. The basis is something Google put in writing in its documentation on links. Google uses links as signals to judge how relevant a page is and to find new pages to crawl. Those are the links that count. They use anchor text (the clickable words of a link) that describes the destination page, and they arrive at a pace that looks like editorial coverage. Brand mentions now add to that. A company that sells SEO tools published a study of 75,000 brands in May 2025. In it, mentions across the web were the factor most strongly correlated with visibility in Google's AI Overviews.
What Google says about links
Google's statement about relevance has a practical consequence for anyone buying links. A link tells Google something about your page through the context it appears in. A personal finance article that links to a mortgage calculator sends a much clearer signal than a stray link on a recipe blog. The second use, discovering new pages, means a link from an outlet is also a way for a newly published URL to get found.
On anchor text, the same Google Search Central page says it should be descriptive and reasonably concise. It should also be relevant to both the page it sits on and the page it points to. By that definition, a generic "click here" anchor adds little. An exact-match anchor (the target keyword, word for word) repeated across many sites doesn't fit either, because it describes little and looks manufactured. We explain how to split anchors between your brand name, the bare URL and descriptive phrases in our piece on anchor text distribution and proportions.
Google also says there is no ideal number of links a page should include. So when a brand or a reseller agency reviews an outlet, the useful question is whether each link in the article makes sense to the reader. Each one should also point to a topic related to the text around it. An article with three well-placed links is worth more than one stuffed with links to industries that have nothing to do with each other.
The line is drawn in Google's spam policies. There, Google defines link spam as creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate search rankings. One example it gives is using automated programs or services to create links to your site. Sites that break those policies may rank lower in results or not appear at all. Google catches violations with automated systems and, when needed, human review that can end in a manual action (a penalty applied by a Google reviewer).
Google's recent ranking updates, with dates
The Google Search Status Dashboard logs every ranking update with its start date and how long it ran. The most recent one was a spam update that began on September 24, 2026 and lasted 13 days. That is far longer than the August and June spam updates, which each finished in a little over 2 days. March 2026 had two almost back to back. First came a spam update that lasted 19 hours. Right after it, a core update (a broad change to Google's ranking systems) ran for 12 days.
| Update | Start date | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| September 2026 spam update | Sep 24, 2026 | 13 days, 16 hours |
| August 2026 spam update | Aug 18, 2026 | 2 days, 16 hours |
| June 2026 spam update | Jun 24, 2026 | 2 days, 1 hour |
| May 2026 core update | May 21, 2026 | 11 days, 21 hours |
| March 2026 core update | Mar 27, 2026 | 12 days, 4 hours |
| March 2026 spam update | Mar 24, 2026 | 19 hours, 30 minutes |
| December 2025 core update | Dec 11, 2025 | 18 days, 2 hours |
| June 2025 core update | Jun 30, 2025 | 16 days, 18 hours |
| March 2025 core update | Mar 13, 2025 | 13 days, 21 hours |
Each row in the dashboard history has a date and a duration. That is enough to start a diagnosis. When a site loses rankings, we first compare these windows with the dates its links went live. Say the drop lines up with a spam update, and the weeks before it brought a wave of links from sites with no readers, all with the same exact-match anchor. Then the pattern is easy to see. If the drop lines up with a core update, the review usually starts with the content. The step-by-step version of that check is in our piece on how Google updates affect a link strategy.
Brand mentions and AI search
Google gives the first answer. Its page on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews (the automatic summaries at the top of some results) or in AI Mode. The basics of traditional search still apply, and links are part of those basics. The same page warns that meeting the requirements, practices and policies does not guarantee that your content will be indexed or shown.
Tool studies add correlations, and it helps to read them knowing who ran them. Ahrefs, a company that sells SEO software, analyzed 75,000 brands in a study published on May 26, 2025. Brand mentions across the web showed the strongest correlation with visibility in Google's AI Overviews. They came ahead of branded anchors and brand search volume. The study itself warns that every factor showed correlations ranging from moderate to very weak. A correlation means two things show up together in the data. It does not prove that one causes the other.
| Factor studied | Result in the 75,000-brand study |
|---|---|
| Brand mentions across the web | Strongest correlation in the study |
| Anchors with the brand name | Below mentions, above brand search volume |
| Brand search volume | Above referring domains |
| Referring domains | Lower than the brand factors |
| Brand traffic | Weak correlation |
| Total number of backlinks | Weaker than branded anchors |
The gap between brands was wide. Of the brands analyzed, 26% had no mentions at all in AI Overviews. Brands in the top quarter for web mentions averaged 169 appearances, compared with 14 for the next quarter down. That is about 12 times more. This matters directly for a brand that buys articles on outlets. An article published on an outlet with real readers carries the link and the brand mention in the same text.
The other study comes from Semrush, another company that sells tools, and was published on October 16, 2025. It picked 1,000 domains at random from its own AI visibility tool and measured how often they were mentioned on five AI platforms. Its main conclusion was that high-quality links matter more than sheer volume. It also found a strong correlation between mentions and the company's own authority metric. Semrush calculates that metric from its own data, so it shows how its tool sees sites. We look more closely at how to read these studies in our piece on the future of link building with AI.
Which tactics carry the most weight now
With Google's documentation as the base and those studies as a pointer, these are the link building tactics that pay off most for a brand about to invest. None of them is new. AI search adds one more reason to choose outlets where your brand gets mentioned as well as linked.
Articles on outlets with real readers in your market
A sponsored article (a paid piece an outlet publishes on its own site, also called a sponsored post) on an outlet your audience reads combines two signals covered here. One is the link Google uses to judge relevance. The other is the brand mention the 75,000-brand study linked to more AI visibility. If you sell in the US, the outlet needs US readers. If you're an agency reselling a campaign for a client in Mexico, it needs readers in Mexico. Ask for the site's traffic by country. Our guide to evaluating a website's quality for link building explains how to read it. Authority scores from SEO tools are fine as a first filter, but they never prove the outlet has an audience.
A topic that matches the site receiving the link
The relevance Google talks about is read at both ends of the link. Take a bookkeeping software company in Ohio. It gains more from an article on a business or finance site than from one on a celebrity gossip site, even if the gossip site gets more visits. Topic fit also protects you. A profile full of links from unrelated industries is one of the first patterns we check when a site drops during a spam update.
Branded anchors and descriptive phrases
In the 75,000-brand study, anchors with the brand name correlated more strongly than the total number of backlinks. That result fits Google's guidance that anchors should be descriptive and concise. In practice, a campaign should mix the brand name, the URL and phrases that describe the page. Save the exact-match keyword anchor for a few cases.
Your own content that deserves to be cited
Industry blogs link to some pieces without being asked: a study with local market data, a calculator, or a pricing guide broken down by city. In the US, an original survey of your industry gives a trade publication a concrete reason to cite you. The same works with local outlets in Spain or Mexico. This kind of resource also makes sponsored articles stronger, because it gives the outlet a page worth linking to inside the story.
A gradual publishing pace
Google gives using automated programs or services to create links as an example of spam. Cheap bulk packages that promise lots of links in a few days are closer to that description than to press coverage. They leave a spike that looks nothing like real editorial coverage. Spreading placements over several months looks more like how a brand's presence grows once the press starts writing about it.
An example: an online furniture store in Chile
Here is an illustrative example. A US agency is running a campaign for a client, an online furniture store in Chile that wants to rank its sofa and desk categories. The cheap option would be a package of links on general blogs that publish anything. The option that matches what Google and the studies say is different. It means a few articles on home, decor and lifestyle sites with readers in Chile. The anchors mix the store's name with phrases like "desks for working from home" (written in Spanish on the actual pages), and each one points to the matching category.
One of those articles could build on a resource the store made itself. For example, a sizing guide for choosing a sofa based on the size of the living room. The outlet links to it because it helps its readers. The placements are spread out over time. Results are tracked in Google Search Console by comparing each category's rankings before and after each article. The agency also checks whether the brand starts showing up in AI Overviews for its searches. Google warns that crawling can take anywhere from several days to several months, so the agency reports to its client every quarter rather than after each article.
How to spot a serious proposal
You can check a good proposal before you pay. If you're an agency reselling campaigns, these are also the points your own client will ask about. These are the criteria we use to separate a solid campaign from a package that puts the site at risk:
- It shows you every outlet before publishing, with its traffic by country and its topic, and lets you drop the ones that don't fit.
- It proposes varied anchors and tells you which page on your site each one points to.
- It spreads the placements out over time and doesn't pack them into one week.
- It leaves out link farms and sites that publish on any topic without readers of their own.
- It agrees on the link attribute and how the article is presented with each outlet, because both change the value of what you're buying.
- It measures results with data you can check yourself, such as Search Console and the rankings of your target pages.
The warning signs are just as easy to see. Watch for a package price for a large number of links with no list of sites. The same goes for a tool metric offered as the only proof of quality, or a promise of rankings by a set date. Any of these shows the proposal depends on volume. Google's spam policies already say that links created mainly to manipulate rankings can push a site down in results or out of them.
Frequently asked questions
Do backlinks still matter with AI search?
Yes. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, so the basics of traditional search still apply, and links are part of them. Tool studies published in 2025 also found that brand mentions across the web go hand in hand with visibility in those answers. That is a correlation, not proof of cause.
What matters more, the number of links or their quality?
The study of 1,000 domains published in October 2025 concluded that high-quality links matter more than volume. In the 75,000-brand study, anchors with the brand name correlated more strongly than the total number of backlinks. That suggests how a link appears matters more than how many you have. Google also says there is no ideal number of links per page.
How long does a new link take to show an effect?
It depends on when Google crawls the page with the link again. Google's documentation says crawling can take anywhere from several days to several months. The timing depends on how often Google decides the page needs refreshing. That's why it makes sense to measure a campaign over months and to compare each result with the date each article went live.
What should I do if my site dropped during a spam update?
First, confirm the dates on the Google Search Status Dashboard. The latest spam update began on September 24, 2026 and lasted 13 days. Then look at which links went live before that window, which sites they came from and which anchors they used. If you find sites with no readers or the same exact-match anchors repeated, that is where your audit starts.
Sources
- Prácticas recomendadas de vínculos SEO para Google (developers.google.com). Accessed October 26, 2026.
- Políticas de spam para la Búsqueda web de Google (developers.google.com). Accessed October 26, 2026.
- History for Ranking (status.search.google.com). Accessed October 26, 2026.
- Funciones potenciadas por IA y tu sitio web (developers.google.com). Accessed October 26, 2026.
- An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied) (ahrefs.com, published May 26, 2025). Accessed October 26, 2026.
- Do Backlinks Still Matter in AI Search? Insights from 1,000 Domains [Study] (semrush.com, published October 16, 2025). Accessed October 26, 2026.