The Future of Link Building: Will Backlinks Still Matter in an AI First World?

If you've worked in SEO for any length of time, you've heard it:

"SEO is dead." "Links are dead." "It's all AI now."

The worry behind it is real. AI Overviews, AI Mode and chat assistants are changing how people find information. So is it still worth investing in link building?

Short answer: yes, but not the version that treats the web like a spreadsheet of DR scores. This guide looks at what has actually changed, using published data, and what to do about it.

What hasn't changed in link building

Links were built into search from the start. Google's original idea was that a link from one page to another works like a vote of confidence.

Today's search is far more complex, but Google's own documentation still says it uses links as a signal when it judges the relevance of pages and to find new pages to crawl. Google's Gary Illyes said at PubCon in September 2023 that links are important, but that people overestimate how important, and that they haven't been a top-three ranking factor for some time.

So links haven't vanished, and they aren't the whole game. They're one signal among many, and a useful one.

What AI search changes, according to the data

Two studies from Ahrefs help make this concrete. They're correlations and snapshots, so treat them as evidence, not laws.

AI Overviews now cite pages beyond the top 10. Ahrefs looked at 863,000 keyword results and about 4 million URLs cited in AI Overviews (data from January 2026, published March 2026). Only 37.9% of the cited URLs also appeared in the top 10 for the same search. In an earlier analysis it had found about 76%, in July 2025. So the link between ranking well and being cited has loosened quickly.

AI assistants pull from different places. In August 2025, Ahrefs analyzed 15,000 long-tail queries and found that on average only 12% of the links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot also appeared in Google's top 10. Perplexity was higher, at 28.6%.

Mentions on other sites seem to matter. In December 2025, Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that the number of times a brand is mentioned across the web correlates with its visibility in AI Overviews (0.656), ChatGPT (0.664) and AI Mode (0.709). It also reported that link and content volume had little impact on AI visibility. That's a correlation, and it doesn't prove that mentions cause citations. But it points the same way: being talked about on relevant sites counts, on top of being linked to.

What Google says is refreshingly plain. Its guidance on AI features states that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations necessary. The usual basics apply: make sure Google can crawl your pages, link to your content internally, give users a good page experience and put the important content in text.

So nobody can promise you AI citations, and we don't. What you can do is build the things all of these systems seem to draw on: a real presence across relevant, trusted sites.

What's fading from link building

Some kinds of link building are already on borrowed time. If your approach looks like this, be worried:

• Buying placements on random "write for us" blogs
• Spinning generic guest posts at scale
• Dropping links into irrelevant lists
• Building networks of sites that exist only to trade links

Google's spam policies say plainly that buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges and automated link creation count as link spam. Since 2016, Google has said its Penguin system devalues spam signals in real time instead of demoting whole sites, which means low-quality links tend to stop counting. See our guide to common link building mistakes.

The habits that look most fragile going forward:

• Links chosen on DR or DA alone, with no real audience behind them
• Networks of near-identical blogs with thin content
• Outreach so templated that it's obviously automated
• Anchor text patterns that don't look natural

That doesn't mean every paid collaboration or guest post is doomed. It means the cheap, fast, repeat-and-rinse style is the past.

What's worth doing now

Instead of asking whether AI will kill link building, ask what kind of link building is still worth doing.

Links tied to real audience value. A link on a page that exists only for SEO is fragile. A link on a page real people read, share and bookmark is much safer. That means niche blogs with actual readers, industry publications and associations, and newsletters with loyal subscribers.

Mentions that build your brand. Think beyond "get a backlink". Being reviewed or compared against competitors, included in tools and resource lists, and mentioned by experts and creators in your field are all worth pursuing. If mentions on other sites do matter for AI visibility, as the Ahrefs data suggests, these are the placements that help.

Pages that deserve the links. If the page you're promoting has weak content, doesn't match the search intent or doesn't help anyone, every link you build to it is a short-term bandage. Build linkable assets with real depth: original data, useful tools, clear explainers, resources for a specific market or language.

Campaigns that would still make sense without Google. Ask yourself: if Google didn't exist, would this collaboration still be worth it? If the answer is no, the link probably isn't future-proof.

Fading and worth doing

Fading

• Buying placements on random blogs
• Spinning generic guest posts at scale
• Networks of sites that only trade links
• Links chosen on DR or DA alone

Worth doing

• Links tied to real audience value
• Mentions that build your brand
• Pages that deserve the links
• Campaigns that make sense without Google

Where AI genuinely helps link builders

AI is one of the better productivity tools link builders have had, as long as a person stays in charge.

• Research and prospecting. It can expand lists of relevant sites, suggest angles you hadn't thought of, and summarize long pages so you can judge relevance faster.
• First drafts of outreach. Useful for variations and for adapting tone across markets. You still need to add real personalization and remove the robot shine everyone is tired of.
• Turning expertise into assets. It can outline guides, repurpose webinars and internal decks, and brainstorm angles. You still need the subject expertise and the quality control.

A simple rule works well: AI can help with research, ideas and drafts. People own the strategy, the judgment and the quality.

Fears to drop, fears to keep

A simple plan for your link building

1. Move from counting links to choosing relationships. Swap "how many links can we get this month?" for "which sites and people matter in our space, and how do we show up there?"
2. Track mentions as well as links. Note when relevant sites talk about you without linking.
3. Invest in a few assets with real depth rather than many thin pages.
4. Use AI as an assistant, not an autopilot.
5. Don't promise yourself citations. Aim to be a source worth citing.

1. 1Choose relationshipsPick the sites and people that matter in your space
2. 2Track mentionsNote when relevant sites talk about you
3. 3Build a few deep assetsDepth beats many thin pages
4. 4Use AI as an assistantNot as an autopilot
5. 5Be worth citingDo not promise yourself citations

Some of SEO's mechanics will disappear: exact-match anchors everywhere, comment spam and bulk guest posts on any site that said yes. That version is already in the past. The core of link building isn't: earning visible signs of trust from other sites and creators is still one of the cleanest signals you can send to a search engine or to a reader.

If you'd like help with the earning part, we run manual outreach where you choose the sites from a shortlist and approve the content before it's published. See how it works.

Sources

Checked on 30 September 2026.

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website (updated December 2025)
• Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google (updated December 2025)
• Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search (updated August 2026)
• Google Search Central blog: Penguin is now part of our core algorithm (September 2016)
• Ahrefs: AI Overview citations and the top 10 (March 2026; 863,000 keywords)
• Ahrefs: How AI assistants' citations overlap with Google (August 2025; 15,000 queries)
• Ahrefs: Brand visibility in AI systems (December 2025; 75,000 brands)
• Search Engine Roundtable: Google says links are no longer a top three ranking factor (PubCon, September 2023)