Matt Cutts: Search Results Look Worse Without Links As Ranking Factor

[aakk9999]

Matt Cutts has been asked a question whether Google has a version of SERPs which excludes backlinks as a ranking factor. Matt replied Google has experimented internally and that the quality of search results look worse.

Is there a version of Google that excludes backlinks as a ranking factor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCY30WhI2og [youtube.com]

So we don't have a version like that that is exposed to the public but we have our own experiments like that internally and the quality looks much much worse. It turns out backlinks, even though there is some noise and certainly a lot of spam, for the most part are still a really really big win in terms of quality of search results.

We played around with the idea of turning off backlink relevance and at least for now backlinks relevance still really helps in terms of making sure that we turn the best, most relevant, most topical set of search results.

[edit reason]Spelling[/edit]

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:51 pm (utc) on Feb 19, 2014]

[ColourOfSpring]

but it would devastate the meatbot industry and all the linkspammer businesses.

jmcc, I really find a lot of your posts very interesting and standing out from the usual opinion (no irony or sarcasm here) - could you elaborate on this point - what do you mean by "meatbot industry"?

[jmccormac]

Basically is it the people who build links or likes or manually submit links to sites for others, ColourOfSpring. The same kind of networks of people, typically working for a pittance, churning out template websites and building links, may provide lots of those "likes" on Facebook. If Google applied a bit of Social Network theory to links and link acquisition, the links built in this way would stick out because they are totally out of character with the core of a site's links. Thus you could have highly focused local websites with geographically, socially or thematically local links getting a lot of links from sites in countries on the other side of the world. The poor meatbot is an unfortunate individual who works for very low wages (and is cheaper to employ than a bunch of servers and software) to do this kind of link building and promotion.

Regards...jmcc