Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”

Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”

I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:

I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that

— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024

Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.

Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.

Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.

Forum discussion at X and image credit to @n_minkov.

For the original iTunes version, click here.

The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.

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Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google is testing more ad formats for its search ads. BingBot is testing new compression methods. Google said it is unlikely your rankings would drop just because you have two or more sites. Google says the indexing API might work for unsupported formats. Google said hyphenated domains are not bad by themselves. And I posted the weekly SEO video recap.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• 
  Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
  
  
  The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings…
• 
  Google Tests More Google Ad Card Formats
  
  
  Google is testing another ad format, another card like format, for its search ads. We previously saw the vertical and tall ad cards, then the carousel horizontal card format and now here are just plain horizontal ad cards.
• 
  Google: It’s Unlikely Your Rankings Dropped Because You Have Two Websites
  
  
  Google was asked if having two websites and Google finding out about them would cause the websites to drop in rankings. John Mueller from Google said that is “not likely,” adding that many people have several websites and that is fine.
• 
  Google: Indexing API May Work For Unsupported Content But…
  
  
  Gary Illyes from Google said in the recent Google SEO office hours the Google Indexing API may work for unsupported content formats, but that you shouldn’t be “surprised if suddenly it stopped working for unsupported verticals overnight.”
• 
  Google: Are Hyphenated Domains Are Bad For Google Ranking?
  
  
  The topic of using hyphens in domain names is one of the oldest SEO topics we have in this space. Heck, in 2004, SEOs said there was a specific Google ranking algorithm that filtered out domains with hyphens in them (Google did not by the way).





• 
  Bingbot To Test Zstd Compression After Fully Gaining Full Brotli Compression
  
  
  Fabrice Canel from Microsoft announced that BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will soon be testing zstd Zstandard compression, a lossless data compression, for its crawler.





• 
  Google Cloud Socks
  
  
  Google loves to print socks for its various swag and here are two variations of socks from the Google Cloud team. I like the white socks because they look more retro but here are nicer versions as well.

Other Great Search Threads:

• From a practical POV, you can specify your prices using structured data on the page, with a merchant center feed (which many ecommerce systems can make for you) or manually in merchant center., John Mueller on X
• I passed this on. I don’t think there’s anything special going on here, but the feedback on this being confusing is good to pass on., John Mueller on X
• If you have older reports that are still helpful, you’ll just need to click the View “button” and access ones you want to remain active., AdsLiaison on X
• The way I see this is more that there are things which can be recognized & ignored, but a site might still be appropriate to show (I don’t know this site/query). Folks get bad SEO advice, and if that can be neutralized granularly without broader effects, , John Mueller on X

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Content Marketing

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

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