Google’s Matt Cutts: Backlink Relevancy Is A Big Win In Terms Of Search Quality

In today’s video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam reaffirms the significance of backlinks. The video is in response to the following question: Does the big G have a version of the search engine that totally excludes any backlink relevancy? I’m wondering what search would look like and am curious to try it […]

Chat with SearchBot

In today’s video from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam reaffirms the significance of backlinks.

The video is in response to the following question:

Does the big G have a version of the search engine that totally excludes any backlink relevancy? I’m wondering what search would look like and am curious to try it out.

While Cutts says there is no public version of the search engine that excludes backlink relevancy, he confirms his team has run internal tests to see what would happen.

According to Cutts, excluding backlink relevancy resulted in “much worse” search quality.

“It turns out backlinks, even though there’s some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really, really big win in terms of quality for search results,” says Cutts.


Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.


About the author

Amy Gesenhues
Contributor
Amy Gesenhues was a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.

Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.