AI Overviews: Are Links Losing Their Place?

[Whitey]

Roger Montti (aka @martinibuster) has a sharp write-up on SEJ: “Google Antitrust Case: AI Overviews Use FastSearch, Not Links.” [searchenginejournal.com...]

He highlights that Google’s Gemini grounding skips the full link-based algo and leans on RankEmbed (semantic + user-side data).

If AI Overviews don’t need links, are we watching the first real step toward a post-link search era?

1. If FastSearch is grounding AI answers without link equity, maybe links are shifting from being a ranking signal to more of a discovery & trust layer. So the question is; are we optimising for Google’s algo, or for user behaviour that trains RankEmbed?

2. If AI Overviews don’t even factor links, then all those years of “get more backlinks = rank higher” might be turning into SEO nostalgia.

Are we clinging to PageRank ghosts while Google quietly rewires the game?

3. On the flip side, let’s not bury links just yet. They still drive discovery, authority and (most importantly) the clicks and engagement that RankEmbed feeds on.

Without links, does your content even get the user signals AI is hungry for?

So where do you stand?

[Brett_Tabke]

For sure - great article by Roger.

Considering links must add a large amount of overhead to the algo.

> or for user behaviour that trains RankEmbed?

Navboost has been a very primary signal for google. It has been as high, or higher of a signal than even PageRank at times.

> links

Well, they aren't a factor in FastSearch (which sorts the final group of results), but you dont get considered in FastSearch if you are not up there in the initial cull of sites. So it still takes links to get into that first group.