55 Link Building Statistics For 2026 (Every One Checked At Source)
55 link building statistics for 2026 on costs, tactics, results, link quality, link rot, paid links and AI search, each one linked to the original study.
By Adam DochertyIndependent digital PR consultant, UK- Published
- Reading time
- 14 min read
I've compiled the latest link building statistics for 2026 into one page.
Every figure has been checked against the original study it came from, and each one links straight to that source.
The stats cover whether links still matter, tactics, costs, results, link quality, how long links last, paid links and AI search. For journalist and outreach data, see my digital PR statistics page.
Key Link Building Statistics At A Glance
Short on time? These are the numbers worth knowing.
48.6%
of SEOs rate digital PR as the most effective link building tactic
$508.95
is the average price SEOs think is acceptable for one high-quality link
96.55%
of pages get no search traffic from Google
56%
of monitored backlinks are still live and correct
52%
of links that die are gone within a year
Only 29%
of SEOs consider their link building successful
0.664
is the correlation between brand mentions and AI Overview visibility, against 0.218 for backlinks
38%
of pages cited in AI Overviews rank in Google’s top 10, down from 76%
Do Links Still Matter?
Every year someone declares link building dead.
The data says otherwise. Links are still one of the clearest dividing lines between pages that get found and pages that don't.
Statistics 1–7
1. 96.55% of pages get no search traffic from Google at all.
Ahrefs studied around 14 billion pages in its Content Explorer index. Just 1.94% get between one and ten visits a month (Ahrefs, 2023).
2. Of roughly 20 million pages with no referring domains, only 2,997 get more than 1,000 search visits a month.
That works out at about one in every 6,671 pages without backlinks (Ahrefs, 2023). It can happen, but it’s rare, and it’s usually in low-competition topics.
3. 64.9% of SEOs believe a website can rank high on Google without backlinks.
That’s from Editorial.Link’s survey of 518 SEO professionals. The survey team says it has seen this mainly in niche sectors targeting low-competition keywords.
4. 80.9% of SEOs believe unlinked brand mentions influence organic rankings.
Not as a direct ranking factor, but through brand awareness and trust (Editorial.Link, 2025).
5. 55.2% of SEOs consider link building the most challenging part of SEO.
A majority, but a smaller one than you might expect (Editorial.Link, 2025).
6. 68% of SEOs think link building will become more important over the next two years because of AI.
That’s from the BuzzStream and Citation Labs Link Building Trends Report, a survey of more than 300 SEOs and link building professionals.
7. 56% plan to invest more in link building over the next 12 months.
Only 9% expect to spend less (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
Link Building Tactic Statistics
There are plenty of ways to build links. Some work far better than others.
Statistics 8–15
8. 48.6% of SEOs rate digital PR as the most effective link building tactic.
Guest posting is a distant second at 16%, followed by linkable assets at 12% (Editorial.Link, 2025).
9. 66.6% of SEOs say finding unique link opportunities beats copying a competitor’s link profile.
Only 10% chose a mix of both (Editorial.Link, 2025).
10. 52.7% of SEOs say service and product pages are the most important pages to get links to.
Blog posts came second (38.4%) and the homepage third (7.1%) (Editorial.Link, 2025).
11. In practice, 68% prioritise links to blog posts, while only 41% focus on product pages.
The homepage sits in between at 44%. That’s from a separate survey, but it shows the gap between where people want links and where they’re easiest to earn (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
12. Only 32% of SEOs follow a documented, repeatable link building process.
The other 68% describe their approach as more spontaneous (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
13. 56% of SEOs outsource at least part of their link building.
The other 44% keep it all in-house (Editorial.Link, 2025).
14. Only 30% of organisations using an external link builder are fully confident in the results.
Put another way, seven in ten aren’t fully sure they’re getting their money’s worth (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
15. Partial-match anchor text is the first choice for 41.7% of SEOs.
Exact match (25.1%) and branded anchors (20.5%) come next (Editorial.Link, 2025).
Link Building Cost And Budget Statistics
So what does it cost?
Note on currencyFigures are in US dollars, as the surveys report them. Both samples are international, so treat these as a guide rather than a UK price list.
Statistics 16–24
16. SEOs consider $508.95 an acceptable price for one high-quality backlink, on average.
That’s based on 412 answers to Editorial.Link’s survey. Respondents said they’d pay more for links from high-authority sites pointing at commercial pages (Editorial.Link, 2025).
17. The average minimum monthly budget needed to compete in highly competitive niches is $8,406.
Answers ranged from $4,000 to $150,000 a month (Editorial.Link, 2025).
18. Agencies put 32.1% of their SEO budget into link building, and in-house teams put 36.03%.
So roughly a third of SEO spend either way (Editorial.Link, 2025).
19. 80.9% of SEOs expect link building to get harder and more expensive over the next two to three years.
The survey team points to rising salaries and freelancer fees as a big part of the reason (Editorial.Link, 2025).
20. 61% of SEOs say gambling brands spend the most on link building.
Finance (18.4%) and law (16.4%) follow (Editorial.Link, 2025).
21. 75.1% say the high cost of premium backlinks is their biggest challenge.
Scaling without losing quality is second at 67.2% (Editorial.Link, 2025).
22. Only 29% say it’s easy to get budget for link building.
That ties in with how hard many teams find it to prove results, as you’ll see below (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
23. In digital PR, the most common known cost per link is $300 to $500.
That’s reported by 19.6% of digital PRs, while the share paying $750 or more rose from 3% to 10.2% in a year (BuzzStream State of Digital PR, 2026).
24. About one in ten of the backlinks Linkody monitors has a cost attached.
Plenty of SEOs still pay for links and track what they spend (Linkody, 2026).
Link Building Results Statistics
Links cost money. So how quickly do they pay off, and how do people prove it?
Statistics 25–31
25. 57.1% of SEOs expect to see results from link building within one to three months.
Another 33% expect it to take three to six months (Editorial.Link, 2025).
26. 75% of link builders are given six months or less to prove the value of their work.
That’s not long for something most people expect to take a few months to show up (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
27. Only 29% of SEOs consider their link building efforts successful.
The largest group (44%) put themselves somewhere in the middle (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
28. 59% judge a link’s impact by the target page’s organic visibility, but only 28% look at revenue.
Rankings (54%) and organic traffic growth (53%) are the other common measures (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
29. Only 40% say their link building reports show the value of the work.
And just 53% say their reports are easy to understand (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
30. Only 25% measure link building results against a control group.
Of those who do, 70% say benchmarking is very valuable (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
31. 52.9% of SEOs find it hard to measure the ROI of link building.
Which goes a long way to explaining why budget is so hard to secure (Editorial.Link, 2025).
Link Quality And Metrics Statistics
Not all links are worth having. Here's how SEOs tell the difference.
Statistics 32–36
32. 89% of SEOs see spammy outbound links as a red flag when assessing a site.
Low-quality content (86.3%), weak authority metrics (72.2%), low relevance (67.2%) and falling organic traffic (63.9%) round out the top five (Editorial.Link, 2025).
33. 64.1% of SEOs would pick Ahrefs DR and UR if they could only use one authority metric.
Semrush Authority Score (15.4%) and Moz DA (11.6%) trail well behind (Editorial.Link, 2025).
34. 78.8% of SEOs think nofollow links affect rankings.
That’s opinion rather than proof, but it’s a big majority (Editorial.Link, 2025).
Opinion, not proofSource: Editorial.Link link building survey (2025)(opens in a new tab)35. 77% of monitored backlinks are dofollow.
The rel=ugc and rel=sponsored tags Google introduced in 2019 are barely used, at 1.4% and 0.25% of links respectively (Linkody, 2026).
36. 56% of anchors on monitored backlinks are keyword or phrase anchors, and just 18% are branded.
Linkody notes these are links SEOs chose to track, so they lean more towards keywords than a natural link profile would (Linkody, 2026).
Tracked links onlySource: Linkody Link Building Statistics 2026(opens in a new tab)
How Long Do Backlinks Last?
This is the part of link building nobody likes to talk about.
Links don't stay put. Pages get deleted, sites get redesigned and editors tidy up old articles.
Statistics 37–43
37. Only 56% of monitored backlinks are still live and correct.
Linkody analysed more than 865,000 backlinks its users actively track. At least 31% were confirmed lost or broken (Linkody, 2026).
38. 52% of the backlinks that die are gone within a year.
A fifth (21%) disappear within three months, and the average lifespan of a link that dies is about 20 months (Linkody, 2026).
39. Only 31% of backlinks are still live after five years or more.
After three months, 89% are still there. After a year, it’s around 63% (Linkody, 2026).
40. Only 33% of links on sites with a Domain Authority under 10 are still live.
For sites between DA 30 and 49, it’s about 70%. Links on weak sites vanish fastest (Linkody, 2026).
41. The typical account lost just 1.8% of the links it built in 2025, even though the pooled average was 14.3%.
Linkody looked at 139 accounts that added at least 30 links. Most lost very little, while one in ten lost more than 70% (Linkody, 2026). Where you get your links from matters.
42. At least 66.5% of links to more than two million websites have rotted since 2013.
Counting other issues too, Ahrefs classed 74.5% of links in its study as lost (Ahrefs, 2022).
43. Most lost links disappear because the linking page was dropped (47.7%) or the link was removed (34.2%).
Redirects, deleted pages and crawl errors account for most of the rest (Ahrefs, 2022).
Paid Links And Risk Statistics
Buying links breaks Google's guidelines. Plenty of SEOs think it happens anyway.
Statistics 44–49
44. 91.9% of SEOs believe their competitors buy backlinks.
That’s almost identical to the 92% who said the same in Editorial.Link’s previous survey (Editorial.Link, 2025).
45. 56% of SEOs don’t think Google is good at spotting and discounting paid links.
The other 44% think it is (Editorial.Link, 2025).
46. 63.1% would place a link on a site listed on a link marketplace if the quality was right.
Just over a third (36.9%) would refuse (Editorial.Link, 2025).
47. Only 39% of SEOs still use Google’s disavow tool.
The majority (61%) no longer do (Editorial.Link, 2025).
48. About 9% of active sites in Linkody’s data have a single disavow rule in place.
When people do disavow, 80% of rules target a whole domain rather than one URL (Linkody, 2026).
49. Around 80% of digital PRs never pay for link placements.
That’s down slightly from 87.3% the year before (BuzzStream State of Digital PR, 2026).
Link Building And AI Search Statistics
AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT have changed how people find information. The big question for link builders is whether links still help you show up there.
Statistics 50–55
50. 73.2% of SEOs believe backlinks affect the chance of appearing in AI search results.
The survey team’s view is that links help indirectly, because AI tools lean on pages that already rank well (Editorial.Link, 2025).
51. Brand web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, compared with 0.218 for backlinks.
That’s from an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands. Being talked about across the web lines up with AI visibility about three times more strongly than link counts do. It’s a correlation, not proof of cause.
Correlation, not causeSource: Ahrefs AI Overview brand visibility study (2025)(opens in a new tab)52. Only 38% of pages cited in Google’s AI Overviews also rank in the top 10 for the same search.
In Ahrefs’ July 2025 study, it was 76%. Today, 31% of cited pages don’t rank in the top 100 at all (Ahrefs, 2026).
53. YouTube makes up 5.6% of all AI Overview citations.
Among cited pages that don’t rank in the top 100, 18.2% are YouTube videos (Ahrefs, 2026).
54. 62% of SEOs say being cited in AI answers is very or extremely important to their organisation.
That’s a lot of demand for something few have cracked, as the next stat shows (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
55. Just 11% have a repeatable process for getting cited by AI.
Plenty of people want it. Very few have worked out how to do it reliably (BuzzStream and Citation Labs, 2025).
How These Statistics Were Checked
Every statistic on this page was traced back to the original study and checked against it in November 2026.
The main sources are Editorial.Link's survey of 518 SEO professionals, the BuzzStream and Citation Labs Link Building Trends Report, Linkody's data on more than 865,000 monitored backlinks, and several Ahrefs studies. Editorial.Link's survey was first published in June 2025 and updated in March 2026, so it's dated 2025 here.
It's worth knowing that Editorial.Link and Citation Labs both sell link building services, and Linkody sells link monitoring. I've still included their data because it's the most recent and transparent available, and each study publishes its sample and method.
I left out stats that appear on other link building statistics pages but couldn't be verified or are badly out of date. That includes surveys from 2019 to 2022 presented as current, figures credited to the wrong study and market size estimates with no public method.
Spotted something that's changed? Let me know through my contact page and I'll update it.
Link Building Statistics FAQs
How much does a backlink cost?
On average, SEOs consider $508.95 an acceptable price for one high-quality link (Editorial.Link, 2025). In digital PR, the most common known cost per link is $300 to $500 (BuzzStream State of Digital PR, 2026). Prices vary a lot by industry and the sites you're targeting.
How long does link building take to work?
57.1% of SEOs expect results within one to three months, and 33% expect three to six months (Editorial.Link, 2025). Competitive industries usually take longer.
Do nofollow links help SEO?
78.8% of SEOs believe they affect rankings (Editorial.Link, 2025). That's opinion rather than proof. Nofollow links also bring referral traffic and brand exposure, and they make up 23% of the backlinks Linkody monitors (Linkody, 2026).
How many backlinks get lost over time?
In Linkody's data, at least 31% of monitored backlinks are confirmed lost, and only 31% survive five years or more (Linkody, 2026).
Do backlinks help with AI search?
73.2% of SEOs think so (Editorial.Link, 2025). But Ahrefs found brand mentions correlate far more strongly with AI Overview visibility than backlinks do, at 0.664 against 0.218 (Ahrefs, 2025).
Final Thoughts
That's the full list for 2026. I'll keep it updated as new studies come out.
If you use any of these stats in your own work, link to the original study rather than this page.
And if you'd like help earning links through digital PR, have a look at my digital PR services page or get in touch through my contact page.
References
All sources accessed 6 November 2026.
Editorial.Link (2025) Link Building Statistics: survey of 518 SEO experts. First published June 2025, updated March 2026.
https://editorial.link/link-building-statistics/BuzzStream and Citation Labs (2025) Link Building Trends Report 2025. Survey of 300+ SEO and link building professionals, published April 2025.
https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/link-building-trends/Linkody (2026) Link Building Statistics 2026: What 865,000 Monitored Backlinks Reveal. François Mommens. Data pulled June 2026, updated August 2026.
https://blog.linkody.com/seo/link-building-statistics-2026-2BuzzStream (2026) State of Digital PR Report 2026. Survey of 150+ digital PR professionals, published February 2026.
https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/state-of-digital-pr-2026/Ahrefs (2023) 96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Tim Soulo, December 2023.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study/Ahrefs (2022) At Least 66.5% of Links to Sites in the Last 9 Years Are Dead. Patrick Stox, April 2022, updated February 2024.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-rot-study/Ahrefs (2025) An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied). Louise Linehan.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/Ahrefs (2026) Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10. Louise Linehan, March 2026.
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-citations-top-10/