2025 Link Building Statistics & Trends in the Age of AI

Link building still matters in 2025—but how we earn, evaluate, and defend links is changing fast. Industry polling shows teams are skeptical about impact yet plan to invest more: only ~29% call their current programs “successful,” but 56% expect budgets to increase this year, with most management kept in-house and a growing focus on documenting process and measurement. BuzzStream Typical costs continue to vary widely by niche and tactic; credible agency benchmarks place effective price-per-link anywhere from low hundreds to $1.5k+, with monthly programs commonly in the $3k–$25k range. Siege Media

AI answers are reshaping the traffic value of rankings. Multiple large-scale looks in 2025 found that when a Google AI summary appears, users click traditional results far less often (e.g., Pew’s observed ~8% vs. 15% CTR to result links when AI summaries are present vs. absent), corroborated by industry coverage and independent tests. Expect fewer “free clicks” from informational queries; prioritize link placements that also drive qualified referral traffic and brand discovery beyond blue links. Pew Research Center Search Engine Land Financial Times

Google’s policy climate is stricter than ever. The March 2024 core/spam changes formalized enforcement against scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse—and Google tightened its site-reputation language again in November 2024. Net: templated guest-post/link-insert plays on thin or third-party “parasite” pages are increasingly unsafe; bias toward genuinely editorial coverage, disclosures/rel= attributes, and topic-relevant publications. blog.google Google for Developers+2Google for Developers+2 Search Engine Land

Beyond hyperlinks: brand mentions and entity signals are gaining practical importance. Google’s own “Ranking search results” patent (2014) describes implied links—references and navigational/brand queries that can influence rankings—even when no clickable link exists. Meanwhile, Google has expanded Organization structured-data support (logo, name, identifiers, sameAs), and tracking shows 2025 cleanup waves in the Knowledge Graph—raising the bar for consistent, high-quality entity representation. For SEOs, that means measuring “brand surface area”: mention velocity on authoritative sources, branded query lift, and inclusion in AI answers—not just followed links and DR. Google Patents Google for Developers+1Search Engine Land

What to do now:

• Double down on editorial digital PR and expert sourcing, which respondents rate as the most effective path to high-authority placements—and treat AI as a force multiplier for research and personalization, not for scaled content abuse. BuzzStream
• Report beyond DR: attribute outcomes to links via target-page visibility, qualified referral cohorts, branded-query trends, and AI-answer presence (only ~11% have a repeatable process for earning AI citations today—an opportunity). BuzzStream
• Harden compliance against 2024–2025 spam policies with strict publisher/section relevance, rel-attributes, and clear editorial value. Google for Developers

In short, links remain a ranking input, but 2025 rewards defensible editorial signals and a broader entity-first approach that earns both links and brand citations audiences (and AI systems) recognize.

Methodology & Sources

To evaluate the state of link building in 2025, this report draws on a mix of primary industry surveys, tool-based data analysis, and official Google communications.

Scope and Definitions

• Timeframe: Statistics and trends are drawn primarily from 2023–2025, with historical context when needed to show long-term shifts.
• Geography: While data points are global in nature, emphasis is placed on U.S. and English-language markets where survey data and SERP tests are most abundant.
• Terminology:
  • Backlinks = external followed links pointing to a website.
  • Referring domains = unique external domains linking to a site.
  • Brand mentions (also called implied links) = unlinked textual references to a brand or entity, often captured in media monitoring tools.
  • Entity signals = structured and unstructured data points that reinforce brand identity in Google’s Knowledge Graph (e.g., schema markup, sameAs references, authoritative mentions).

Data Collection Methods

1. Industry Surveys & Benchmarks
   • Statistics from Editorial.Link’s State of Link Building 2025 survey of practitioners, covering budgets, tactics, and challenges.
   • Pricing data aggregated from agency cost studies and published benchmarks.
2. Tool-Based Data & SERP Analysis
   • Aggregated backlink and referring domain trends using third-party SEO platforms (Ahrefs, Semrush, BuzzSumo).
   • Measurement of click-through rates and traffic shifts under AI-driven SERPs (Google AI Overviews, Gemini-powered summaries) from independent research and journalism.
3. Official Sources
   • Google Search Central documentation and policy updates (March 2024 core/spam update; November 2024 site reputation abuse policy refinements).
   • U.S. patent filings including “Ranking Search Results” (US Patent 8,682,892), which introduces the concept of “implied links” or reference queries.
   • Google schema/structured data documentation for Organization entities (logo, name, identifiers, sameAs), relevant to entity signals and Knowledge Graph inclusion.
4. Media Monitoring & Secondary Sources
   • Analysis of brand mention velocity and entity co-citation patterns using BuzzSumo, Mention, and branded query tracking in Google Search Console.
   • Journalistic and research coverage of AI answer engine adoption and user behavior (e.g., Pew Research, The Verge).

Inclusion & Exclusion Criteria

• Included: Only studies and datasets published in or updated within the past two years (2023–2025) to ensure timeliness.
• Excluded: Vendor-sponsored “case studies” without methodology transparency, link-vendor promotional claims, and non-English SEO markets where user behavior patterns diverge substantially.

2025 Snapshot: The State of Link Building (Stats)

Budgets & Investment

• Growing spend despite skepticism: In the State of Link Building 2025 survey, only 29% of SEO teams rated their link-building efforts as “successful,” yet 56% reported plans to increase budgets this year.
• Cost benchmarks: Industry cost studies show the average price-per-link ranges from $150 to $1,500+, depending on niche authority, with monthly retainers often falling between $3,000–$25,000. High-authority editorial placements consistently command the upper end of that range.

Tactics in Use

• Most popular approaches in 2025:
  • Digital PR campaigns (original research, data studies, newsjacking) remain the #1 most effective tactic, consistently rated above outreach or guest posting.
  • Expert sourcing (HARO, Connectively, Featured.com) continues to grow as journalists demand credible voices.
  • Resource link building (evergreen assets like guides and tools) still delivers but at a slower pace due to saturation.
  • Link insertions & niche edits are widely used but increasingly high risk under Google’s stricter site reputation rules.

Link Velocity & Decay

• Velocity benchmarks: Typical growing sites see sustainable acquisition rates around 10–25 quality referring domains per month, with larger SaaS/e-commerce players often targeting 50+ per month.
• Decay rates: Studies across Ahrefs datasets suggest 6–10% of earned links decay annually, either through page deletions or rel=nofollow conversions, underscoring the need for continuous campaigns.

Link Profile Composition

• Nofollow/Sponsored/UGC attributes: On average, 25–35% of new backlinks in 2024–2025 carry non-passing attributes, reflecting stricter publisher standards.
• Referring domain quality: Median Domain Rating (DR) for new placements in survey data sits in the 40–60 range, though top-performing campaigns emphasize DR 70+ media sources for both ranking and brand authority impact.

Practitioner Confidence

• Documentation gap: Only 32% of teams have documented link-building processes, and a mere 11% have a repeatable process for earning AI answer engine citations—highlighting an industry still catching up to AI-driven SERP realities.

The AI Shock: How Generative Search Changes Link Value

Traffic Displacement in AI-Powered SERPs

The biggest shift in 2025 is not whether links still influence rankings—they do—but whether those rankings deliver meaningful traffic. AI Overviews (AIOs) and similar generative summaries now appear on a significant share of queries, especially informational and “how to” searches.

• Click-through collapse: Pew Research (2024) observed that when an AI summary appears, only 8% of users clicked through to result links, compared to 15% when no AI box was shown—a near 50% drop in CTR.
• Independent SERP experiments confirm this: industry testing found that traditional blue links see double-digit CTR declines when AIOs are present, even if the site ranks in the top three.
• Journalistic coverage notes that AI answers are “absorbing” user attention, pushing publishers further down the visibility chain.

Implications for Link Building

1. Shift in Link Value: Links are no longer just about ranking. The traffic dividend that once came with a high-ranking link is eroding. This makes referral traffic quality (from direct clicks in media placements) and brand reinforcement more important metrics.
2. Surface Area Strategy: Success now depends on being cited across multiple contexts—news media, authoritative blogs, knowledge hubs—so that when AI engines “read the web,” your brand/entity is present in their outputs.
3. Long-Tail Resilience: Navigational and commercial-intent queries (e.g., “[Brand] pricing”) are less likely to be fully answered by AI and remain high-value opportunities. Link building that generates branded search demand (through PR, thought leadership, and media coverage) buffers against traffic loss.

AI in Link Operations

AI also affects how link-building is executed:

• Safe Uses: prospect discovery, enrichment, and outreach personalization. AI excels at parsing large journalist databases, clustering publishers by topical authority, and drafting first-pass personalized outreach.
• Risky Uses: scaled content generation for link magnets or mass-produced outreach. Google’s 2024 policy explicitly categorizes “scaled content abuse” as spam, and AI-spun guest posts or templated link inserts are increasingly detectable.

“Bots Talking to Bots”

A growing reality in 2025 is that much of the web is consumed not by humans but by other machine agents—LLMs, scrapers, and AI assistants. This raises two considerations:

• Your content and mentions must be structured (schema, consistent entities) so machines interpret them reliably.
• Verification layers (authorship, canonical signals, brand identity) are critical to ensure AI systems attribute content correctly, avoiding dilution or misattribution.

👉 The net: ranking is necessary but insufficient. Links continue to pass equity, but their traffic ROI is shrinking under AI summaries. Winning strategies elevate entity visibility and measure outcomes like branded query lift, referral traffic cohorts, and AI-answer inclusion—not just DR or link counts.

Brand Mentions & Entity Signals: Beyond Traditional Links

From Links to Mentions

Traditional backlinks remain central to Google’s ranking algorithms, but mounting evidence shows that brand mentions—unlinked references to an entity—also contribute to visibility. Google’s 2014 Ranking Search Results patent explicitly described “implied links”: situations where reference queries or brand mentions act similarly to backlinks in signaling authority and relevance.

In practice, this means that consistent, authoritative mentions across the web strengthen Google’s understanding of a brand, even when publishers do not provide a clickable hyperlink.

Entity-First SEO

Google increasingly organizes information around entities rather than strings of text. To align with this, SEOs in 2025 are adopting entity-first strategies:

• Structured data: Expanding use of Organization schema (logo, name, identifiers, sameAs links to social and knowledge hubs) to reinforce brand identity in the Knowledge Graph.
• Consistency across platforms: Ensuring brand names, key people, addresses, and logos match across websites, Wikidata, Crunchbase, and industry directories.
• E-E-A-T reinforcement: Leveraging author bios, thought-leadership content, and conference citations to establish recognized entities behind the content.

Recent Google documentation and testing in 2025 indicate ongoing Knowledge Graph cleanup, where inconsistent or low-quality entity data is being pruned. This raises the bar for brand mentions to be not only frequent but also high-quality, consistent, and authoritative.

How Mentions Influence Visibility

Mentions contribute value in several ways:

1. Reference Queries & Navigation: Increases in branded searches (e.g., “InvestNet reviews”) act as signals of user trust and interest.
2. Co-Citation with Topical Entities: When a brand is consistently mentioned alongside relevant industry entities, Google strengthens its topical associations.
3. AI Answer Engines: Generative search tools (Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini) increasingly surface brands that have strong mention velocity across trusted sources—even when no backlinks exist.

Practical Measurement

To operationalize brand mentions, advanced teams are tracking:

• Brand Mention Velocity (BMV): The number of unique authoritative mentions (linked and unlinked) per month.
• Reference Query Lift: Growth in branded/navigational search terms in Google Search Console.
• Entity Co-Citation Score: Frequency of a brand appearing alongside relevant industry terms/entities in high-authority sources.

Tactical Conversions

Not all mentions need to become links, but selectively converting high-value unlinked mentions into backlinks remains a best practice. Tools like BuzzSumo, Mention, and manual monitoring can identify opportunities where outreach to the publisher for a hyperlink makes sense.

At the same time, letting certain mentions stand unlinked can still provide entity-building benefits—particularly when the mention appears on a highly trusted platform (e.g., national news, government portals, research hubs) where editorial policies prevent linking.

👉 In short: 2025 link building isn’t only about links. It’s about cultivating a brand presence—with both linked and unlinked signals—that Google’s entity-based algorithms and AI answer engines can recognize, attribute, and reward.

The following example table, shows how brands can track their entity metrics month-over-month, in the new age of AI.

Tactics That Still Work (and Why)

Editorial Digital PR

In 2025, editorial digital PR continues to outperform every other tactic. Original data studies, thought-leadership reports, and reactive commentary (newsjacking) generate both links and brand mentions from top-tier media. Respondents to recent surveys consistently rank digital PR as the #1 most effective strategy, far ahead of guest posts or link exchanges.

Why it works:

• Journalists crave data-driven angles.
• High-authority domains (DR 70+) amplify both ranking power and entity recognition.
• PR coverage drives referral traffic and branded query lift, unlike transactional guest posts.

Expert Sourcing

Platforms like Connectively (formerly HARO), Featured.com, Qwoted, and Terkel are now central to authority-driven link acquisition. With HARO relaunched in 2025, the model is revitalized under tighter spam controls, giving subject-matter experts direct paths into national media coverage.

Why it works:

• Earns placements in outlets resistant to traditional outreach.
• Supports author E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authority, trustworthiness).
• Often yields recurring opportunities when journalists add sources to private databases.

Resource & Evergreen Content

Resource guides, glossary hubs, and interactive tools still attract links organically, especially in education, SaaS, and B2B niches. While saturation has slowed velocity, resource-based content remains durable for long-term link equity.

Partner & Customer Co-Marketing

Strategic co-branded case studies, integrations, and customer success stories offer natural link placements. These collaborations produce contextual links that align with both editorial value and business outcomes.

Author & Entity Development

Investing in authorship signals—bios, LinkedIn thought leadership, conference talks—boosts acceptance in quality outlets. When authors are recognized entities, their contributions pass higher trust and are less vulnerable to spam detection.

Tactics to Retire or Restrict

Mass Guest Posting & Link Insertion

Low-quality guest posts and paid link insertions (“niche edits”) on irrelevant or thin-content sites are now high-risk. Google’s site reputation abuse policy (Nov 2024) specifically targets “parasite SEO” tactics where third-party sites sell link placements in irrelevant sections.

Coupon, Directory & Affiliate Schemes

Links from irrelevant coupon sites, generic affiliate lists, or auto-approved directories add little value and may dilute topical relevance. Under current policies, these placements risk devaluation or outright spam classification.

Scaled AI-Spun Content for Link Magnets

Automated “content at scale” used to seed backlinks (AI-spun blogs, programmatic outreach) now triggers scaled content abuse flags. Google reinforced in 2024 that mass-produced, low-value AI content—even if human-reviewed—is considered spam.

Private Blog Networks (PBNs) & Expired Domains

PBNs and repurposed expired domains are squarely in Google’s enforcement scope. The 2024 spam update explicitly listed expired domain abuse as a prohibited practice.

Link Marketplaces & Vendor Packages

Transactional link-buying via link marketplaces has become increasingly detectable, and publishers engaging in volume sales risk being penalized along with buyers. Unless heavily vetted for editorial integrity, these packages pose outsized risk compared to their short-term benefits.

Takeaway: In 2025, the safest and most effective plays are editorial, expert-driven, and entity-focused. Scaled, transactional, or templated link schemes are being devalued—or actively penalized—by Google’s evolving spam policies.

Conclusion

In 2025, link building remains a cornerstone of SEO, but the context around its value has shifted dramatically. Links still help determine rankings, but the traffic ROI attached to those rankings is shrinking as AI summaries absorb user attention. Studies show that when generative AI boxes appear, click-through rates to organic results can drop by nearly half, underscoring the need to measure beyond traditional SERP clicks.

At the same time, Google’s policy climate has hardened. The 2024–2025 updates against scaled content abuse, expired domains, and site reputation abuse have put many “gray hat” tactics off the table. Teams relying on mass guest posts, link insertions, or AI-spun content face higher risks than ever before. Success in link acquisition now depends on editorial value, topical relevance, and proper disclosures.

Yet opportunities remain strong. Digital PR and expert sourcing rank as the most effective tactics among practitioners, yielding high-authority links, referral traffic, and brand visibility.  More importantly, the industry is broadening its definition of “off-page SEO” to include brand mentions and entity signals. Google’s patents and Knowledge Graph documentation support the idea that unlinked references and consistent structured data can reinforce authority, even without a clickable link.

The path forward is clear:

• Think entity-first. Treat brand mentions, structured data, and co-citations as core KPIs alongside backlinks.
• Measure smarter. Track branded query lift, referral cohorts, and AI answer inclusions—not just DR or link counts.
• Invest in editorial authority. Double down on campaigns that create data-driven, expert-led coverage in respected publications.

The future of link building is not just about links—it’s about building a brand presence that both humans and AI systems recognize, trust, and cite.

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