Links
Backlink
A link to your site from another site. Google uses links to find pages and as one signal of which pages are relevant.
Google's link guidance says it uses links as a signal when working out how relevant pages are, and to find new pages to crawl. Not every link carries that signal in full. Links marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc are treated as hints, and links bought or traded to manipulate rankings break Google's spam policies.
How many links carry a qualifier varies by site. When we read the outbound links on 34 sites on 14 November 2026, 96 of 702 (14%) were marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
In our view the dependable way to earn them is to have a page other writers need to cite: a figure nobody else measured, a tool that does a job, or the clearest explanation of something.