How much time does search engines take for a backlink to be credited?

[sunnyujjawal]

How long does it take for backlink to be credited to your site by Google & other search engines by which ranking change are reflected.

Does the keywords rank get updated immediately after search engines crawls the backlinks? Some people say the ranking changes only go into effect when search engines updates their SERPs. Is it true?

[SnowMan68]

I think it depends on the link and how competitive the market. I have seen some of our new links indexed and push the keyword up the same day. Other times it has taken 3-6 months to see any effect on the keyword. How well do you know your market? If you are starting at page 2 and beyond you should see some movement right away with good quality in-content editorial links. Once you start to get into the top 10 and especially top 3 it doesn't move much in competitive fields, but that doesn't mean the link isn't credited right away. It just means the links required to move your phrase are exponentially higher once you are in the top 3 out of millions of pages.