Published August 20, 2026
Do backlinks still help my business show up in AI search?
Yes, but not the way link building used to work. A 2025 Semrush study of 1,000 domains found that link volume barely moves the needle in AI-generated answers — what actually correlates with getting mentioned by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews is backlink quality and site authority, and the effect only shows up once a domain clears a meaningful authority threshold (Loktionova, 2025). Below that line, more links do almost nothing.
What this means
Traditional SEO treats backlinks as a ranking signal that adds up more or less linearly: more quality links, better position. AI answer engines don’t work that way. Semrush’s analysis measured both a linear correlation (Pearson) and a threshold-sensitive one (Spearman) between a domain’s Authority Score and how often it got mentioned in AI-generated answers, and found a moderate 0.23 linear relationship but a stronger 0.36 threshold-based one — in plain terms, backlink authority matters, but mostly once a site is already reasonably established (Loktionova, 2025).
That’s a different mental model than most business owners have. It also means a brand-new site with a handful of decent links isn’t going to out-cite an established competitor just by buying a link package. The gains show up for businesses that are already in the game and pushing from good to strong.
Who this applies to
This matters most for local and professional-service businesses that have already done basic SEO work — a real website, some citations, maybe a few press mentions — and are deciding where to spend the next round of marketing budget. If you’re choosing between a directory-link package and a single feature in a well-known local publication, the research says the feature wins.
How we’d evaluate it
Before recommending any link-building spend, we’d look at three things: your current Authority Score and how it compares to competitors already getting cited by AI engines in your category, the diversity of your referring domains (a few dozen links from one directory network counts far less than fewer links from varied, relevant sources), and whether your existing backlinks include any image-based links, which Semrush’s data shows carry unusually strong correlation with AI mentions once a site has some baseline authority (Loktionova, 2025).
Available options
A few approaches the data actually supports: digital PR and earned coverage from topically relevant publications, original data or visual assets (charts, infographics, product photography) that other sites want to embed and credit, and diversifying referring domains rather than concentrating links on one or two sources. What the data doesn’t support: bulk low-authority directory submissions, link exchanges, or treating nofollow links as worthless — Semrush found nofollow links carried nearly identical correlation with AI mentions as follow links (0.340 vs. 0.334 Pearson) (Loktionova, 2025).
Benefits, limitations, and tradeoffs
The benefit of quality backlinks is real but conditional — they help once you’re past a threshold, and the gains compound with authority. The limitation is that backlinks alone are a weaker, more indirect signal than what actually happens at the content level. The Princeton and IIT Delhi team’s peer-reviewed GEO-bench study found that adding citations, direct quotations, and statistics to a page’s own content improved its visibility in generative-engine responses by 30–41%, outperforming most off-page tactics they tested (Aggarwal et al., 2024). Backlinks build the foundation; what’s written on the page still does a lot of the work.
What we know
Three points worth anchoring on. First, Semrush’s 1,000-domain study (run with growth advisor Kevin Indig) found link quality has a strong 0.65 Pearson correlation with raw AI mention counts, but the relationship is threshold-based, not linear (Loktionova, 2025). Second, Search Engine Land’s 2026 guide to AI-era link building reports that nearly three-quarters of surveyed SEO leaders believe backlinks still positively influence AI search appearance, even as unlinked brand mentions on sites like Reddit and YouTube take on new weight of their own (Zeller, 2026). Third, the Princeton/IIT Delhi GEO paper — the first peer-reviewed benchmark of its kind, presented at KDD 2024 — found that on-page content signals (citing sources, adding statistics, using an authoritative tone) produced larger visibility gains than most single off-page factors they tested, which is a reminder that link building is one lever among several, not the whole strategy (Aggarwal et al., 2024).
Next steps
Start by checking whether your site is even in the authority range where backlinks start mattering — a basic backlink and authority audit will tell you that. If you’re below the threshold, content-level fixes (clear sourcing, real statistics, a well-structured FAQ) are likely to move the needle faster than a link campaign. If you’re already established, prioritize a small number of earned, topically relevant links over a large number of low-quality ones, and don’t write off nofollow opportunities from credible sites.
Orlando considerations
Central Florida’s local business press — Orlando Business Journal, Orlando Sentinel, local TV station websites, and industry-specific Florida publications — represents exactly the kind of higher-authority, topically relevant linking opportunity the research favors over generic directory links. A single feature or mention in one of these outlets is likely to do more for AI visibility than a stack of low-authority local directory listings, though directory listings still matter for basic consistency and shouldn’t be skipped entirely.
Frequently asked questions
Should I stop building backlinks and focus only on brand mentions?
No. The data shows backlinks and unlinked brand mentions both matter, and they measure different things. Backlinks still correlate with AI mentions once a site clears a minimum authority threshold; brand mentions on sites like Reddit and YouTube add a separate signal on top of that. Dropping one for the other isn’t supported by the research.
Do nofollow links actually help AI visibility?
According to Semrush’s 2025 study, yes — nofollow links showed nearly the same correlation with AI mentions as follow links (Pearson 0.340 vs. 0.334). That’s a meaningful difference from how nofollow links are treated in traditional Google ranking, where they generally pass no ranking credit.
How many backlinks does my business actually need?
There’s no fixed number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. The research points to a threshold effect — authority has to clear a certain bar before it moves AI visibility — rather than a straight line where every additional link helps equally. A handful of links from genuinely authoritative, relevant sites will do more than dozens from low-quality directories.
Does this apply the same way across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews?
No — Semrush’s study found link-quality correlation was strongest for standard ChatGPT and weakest for ChatGPT Search and Perplexity, while image-based links correlated most strongly with Perplexity and ChatGPT Search. Each platform weighs signals somewhat differently, which is one more reason no one can promise a specific outcome across all of them.
References
Aggarwal, P., Murahari, V., Rajpurohit, T., Kalyan, A., Narasimhan, K., & Deshpande, A. (2024). GEO: Generative engine optimization. In KDD 2024 — Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 5–16). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3637528.3671900
Loktionova, M. (2025, October 16). Do backlinks still matter in AI search? Insights from 1,000 domains [Study]. Semrush Blog. https://www.semrush.com/blog/backlinks-ai-search-study/
Zeller, A. (2026, July 20). How AI search is reshaping link building strategy. Search Engine Land. https://searchengineland.com/guide/ai-search-link-building-strategy
Last updated: August 20, 2026