Backlinks are links on other websites that point to a page on yours, also called inbound or incoming links. Search engines read each one as a reference: another site telling its readers your page is worth a visit.
They still matter in 2026, in Google’s rankings and now in the AI answers built on top of them. The backlinks and earned mentions behind search and AI visibility come from the same place: other people choosing to point at your work.
What has changed is which links count. One link from a publication your buyers read is worth more than any number bought, swapped or generated, and both Google and Bing treat manufactured links as spam.
How a backlink works
Every backlink has four parts. Here is one in the HTML of the page that carries it:
<p>The figures come from
<a href="https://example.com/freight-rate-index/">the monthly freight rate index</a>
published by a logistics software company.</p>- The linking page is where the link sits. Its subject and its readers decide most of what the link is worth.
- The anchor text is the clickable words. Google asks for anchor text that is descriptive, concise and relevant to both pages.
- The target is the page on your site the link points to: here the index itself, not the home page.
- The rel value is optional. Without one it is an ordinary link;
sponsored,ugcandnofollowask search engines to treat it differently.
Google uses links in two ways, by its own account. They are a signal of what a page is about and how relevant it is, and they are the routes its crawler follows to find new pages.
Backlinks, referring domains and the terms around them
These words get used as if they meant the same thing. They do not, and the difference decides what you count and what you chase.
| Term | What it is | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink | A link on another site’s page that points to a page on yours | The unit search engines read, one link at a time |
| Referring domain | A website that links to you, counted once however many of its pages do | Shows how many separate sources point at you; one site linking from every page is still one site |
| Internal link | A link between two pages of your own site | Carries readers and crawlers from the pages others link to across the rest of the site |
| External link | A link from your page to another site | Your external link is their backlink, and citing your sources this way builds trust |
| Brand mention | Your company named on another site with no link | Buyers and AI tools read it, though there is no link to follow or count |
| Local citation | Your business name, address and phone number on a directory or map | Part of the listings that local map results run on, with or without a link |
| AI citation | A page an AI answer names or links as a source | The result AI search visibility aims for, earned partly through everything above |
Do backlinks still matter in 2026?
For Google, yes. Its guide to its ranking systems, updated in December 2025, says link analysis through PageRank “continues to be part of our core ranking systems”. Its July 2026 guide to optimizing for AI features says those features are “rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems”.
Independent research now ties links to AI citations directly. A University of Toronto study published in October 2026 tracked 468,037 citations in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answers over 90 days of commercial questions.
Comparing pages on the same site, one standard deviation more referring websites went with 22.7% more citations, mostly in Gemini, which is grounded on Google Search. The links were counted after the citations, so the authors do not claim which caused which.
Ranking and being cited are not the same thing either. For the questions as asked, only 0.1 to 0.6% of the pages the engines cited were in Google’s top 10, which is why a page that ranks can still be missing from the answer.
Bing says the same about Copilot. Its webmaster guidelines say “strong internal and external linking supports discovery, authority evaluation, and grounding eligibility”, and its May 2026 post on grounding says it runs on “the same crawlers, the same quality signals” as search.
For a B2B company the bigger lever is being named. In the study’s second market, small business software vendors, a cited third-party page that named a vendor raised the odds of the answer naming that vendor 39.7 times in ChatGPT and 17.7 times in Gemini.
Website authority made no difference for those small vendors. Coverage on other sites did, and that coverage is where B2B backlinks come from. It pays without a click too, since buyers who read about you and never click can come back later as branded searches.
In local map results, links share the weight with reviews when Google judges how well known a business is.
What makes one backlink worth more than another
It comes back to one question: would a reader of that page follow the link, and be glad they did? Five things decide the answer.
Relevance
A link from a site about your buyers’ industry beats a link from a site about everything. For a freight software company, one mention in a logistics trade journal is worth more than a listing on a general business directory.
The linking site’s standing
A link from a site that is itself widely linked and trusted carries more than one from a site nobody links to. Link tools sell scores that estimate this. Google says plainly that “third-party tools don’t have access to our internal ranking data”, so treat the scores as a rough sort.
Placement
A link in the body of an article, in a sentence about your subject, is an editorial choice. The same link in the footer of every page on a site is a pattern Google lists as link spam. An author bio sits somewhere between the two.
Anchor text
You rarely choose the anchor text of a link you earned, and that is the point. A run of links that all carry the same commercial keyword looks arranged, and Google’s spam policy names optimized anchor text in guest posts and press releases.
Follow, nofollow, sponsored and ugc
There is no dofollow attribute. A link with no rel value is an ordinary link, and “dofollow” is the industry’s name for one. Google defines three values for the rest: sponsored for paid placements, ugc for comments and forum posts, and nofollow for anything else you would rather not vouch for.
Google says links marked with these values will generally not be followed by its crawler. A nofollow link from a trade publication still sends readers and still puts your name on a page AI engines cite.
Types of backlinks a B2B company earns
Most lists of backlink types are written for publishers and online shops. A B2B company earns links from a smaller set of places, each with its own mix of ranking value, buyer attention and risk.
| Type | Where it comes from | How it is usually marked | What it is worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial coverage | A trade publication or industry newsletter citing your data, quoting your people or reviewing your product | An ordinary link | The best there is: relevant, chosen by an editor, read by buyers, and the earned media AI engines lean on |
| Partner and integration listings | A technology partner’s marketplace, an integration directory, a reseller’s vendor page | Usually ordinary | High relevance, and buyers evaluating the partner find you there |
| Customer stories | A client’s announcement, case study or supplier page that names you | Varies | Relevant and credible; ask when the client publishes, never make it a contract term |
| Associations and standards bodies | Member directories, working group pages, certification lists | Usually ordinary | Trusted, on topic, and checked by buyers doing due diligence |
| Speaker pages | Conference session pages and speaker bios | Usually ordinary | Editorial: the organiser chose you for what you know |
| Event sponsorships | Sponsor lists and logo walls | Should be sponsored | A paid placement, worth the audience rather than the link |
| Podcasts and webinars | Show notes and guest pages on someone else’s series | Usually ordinary | Relevant, and the episode itself is a long mention of your work |
| Research citations | Other writers citing data you published | An ordinary link | Links you never had to ask for |
| Guest articles | An article you write for another site | Ordinary when the editor chose the link | Fine when written for the readers; spam when the link is the point |
| Business directories | General listing sites | Varies | Low: Google lists low-quality directory links as spam. The industry directories buyers use are the exception |
| Paid placements | Advertorials, sponsored articles, paid newsletter slots | Must be sponsored or nofollow | Reach only: marked as Google requires, they are not meant to carry ranking credit |
| Forum and community posts | Answers in communities and comment threads | ugc or nofollow, set by the platform | Readers, not rankings |
| Unlinked mentions | Coverage that names you without a link | No link | Read by buyers and AI tools, and often one polite request from becoming a link |
How to earn backlinks in 2026
Every method that lasts gives someone a reason to point at you. None of these involves paying for a link.
Publish data others need
Writers link to material they cannot get anywhere else. A B2B company sits on plenty of it: data from its own operations, survey answers from its buyers, a benchmark nobody in its category has published, a template or calculator buyers use.
Publish it with the method stated, at one address you keep updating, so every link it earns keeps pointing at something current.
Be the source trade editors quote
Trade editors need named people who can explain a change in the market fast. List the publications your buyers read, follow what they cover, and offer comment when the news touches your field.
Journalist request services, where reporters post the questions they need answered, work the same way at scale. Answer fast and specifically, and the quote carries your name, often with a link.
Ask the relationships you already have
Most B2B companies have links waiting that nobody has asked for: the integration partner with no listing for you, the association page with your name but no link, the conference that published your session, the client announcement that named you.
A company with several offices has a local version of each, from the chamber of commerce to the college it hires from, and each can link to the page for the office it knows. Ask, but never make a link a condition of a contract: Google lists that as link spam.
Find who links to similar companies, not to you
Bing Webmaster Tools compares your backlinks with up to two other sites for free, and filters the list down to the domains that link to them but not to you. That list is the trade press, partners and associations already covering your field.
Reclaim what you already earned
Search for your company and product names, find coverage that names you without a link, and ask the writer to add one. They already chose to write about you, so it is an easy request.
Then fix links to pages that no longer exist. When this site moved off its old WordPress build, every old address with a matching page got a permanent redirect, so links to it still land. Pages for work the company no longer does were left to return a 404.
What counts as link spam, and what to do about bad links
Google’s spam policies, updated in August 2026, define link spam as links made “primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings”. Bing’s guidelines say links “should be earned organically through high-quality, useful content”. Between them they rule out:
- Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, whether the payment is money, goods, services or a free product
- Excessive link exchanges, partner pages that exist only to cross-link, and private link networks
- Links made by automated programs, or spread through widgets and the footers and templates of other sites
- Advertorials and guest posts carrying links with optimized anchor text
- Low-quality directories and bookmark sites
- Forum comments with optimized links in the post or the signature
- Requiring a link in a contract without letting the publisher mark it
Paying for visibility is fine. Google calls paid links a normal part of advertising, as long as they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". Mentions follow the same rule: Google’s 2026 AI guide tells site owners to ignore tactics like “pursuing inauthentic mentions”.
What to do about bad links
Every site collects junk links it never asked for. Google says most sites will never need its disavow tool, and keeps it for sites with many spammy or paid links that have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. Used wrongly, it can hurt rankings.
If nobody built paid links to your site and Search Console shows no manual action, leave the junk alone. This site had a different problem, spam pages left by a hack of its old WordPress build, and fixed it by making those addresses return a 404.
How to check your backlinks and AI citations for free
Google and Bing both publish free reports on the links they have found and, since 2026, on how often you appear in AI answers.
- Search Console Links report. Your top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text, with an export of the newest links. It is a sample, and it does not show which links are nofollow.
- Bing Webmaster Tools Backlinks. Referring domains, anchor text and linking pages, also a sample, plus the comparison with other sites described above.
- Search Console AI reports. Since August 2026, every site can see how often its pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and which pages they were.
- Bing AI Performance. In preview, it shows how often Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries cite your pages, the queries behind those citations and, since June 2026, your share of the citations for each one.
Read them side by side. Look for which pages earn links and why, which partners know you but do not link yet, links pointing at dead addresses, and which pages AI answers cite compared with the pages that rank.
● About the author
Hamza Hashim is the marketing strategist at Katama. He owns the channel mix and the order it gets built in: what ships first, what waits for evidence, and what gets stopped when the evidence says stop. Meet the team.