“Link equity” no longer transfers in a vacuum. Links appear to influence rankings only when they reinforce topical relevance and site-level trust, not simply authority.
This aligns with Google’s DOJ testimony, where links were described as one signal among many, interpreted in context rather than as a deterministic ranking factor. Patents around contextual weighting and reasonable surfer, plus engagement systems like NavBoost, suggest links help define semantic neighborhoods, while user behavior helps validate which sources deserve visibility within them.
Roger Montti’s (aka martinibuster) SEJ article frames this shift clearly, and is a must read:
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searchenginejournal.com...]
Question: If link value is now gated by semantic context, are DA-driven link metrics becoming misleading rather than merely incomplete?
