Link Building in the AI Era: Why It’s No Longer About Links, But About Brand Credibility

According to research conducted by Seer Interactive, AI Overviews can reduce click-through rates (CTRs) in organic results by up to 61%. If you monitor and analyze your organic traffic, you are likely noticing downward trends as well.

Will acquiring backlinks guarantee the return of this traffic? No, the drops are related to the new architecture of the search results page, and we won’t recover the old CTRs 1:1. However, links do something equally important: they increase the chance that AI will notice our content and feature it in results.

Link Building will help you gain a competitive advantage on two fronts. On one hand, it enables you to secure the top 3 positions in organic results and supports traditional conversions. On the other hand, it helps establish a presence in AI and LLMs, creating new touchpoints with potential customers.

How do we know this? We tested it in a study involving two live organisms in two completely different markets. You can read about the findings and results below!

We decided to put this to the test and conducted a study based on our delante.pl site in the Polish market, as well as a flight search engine in the Bulgarian market. In both cases, we acquired 15 diversification links and 4 paid publications per month.

The Results?

The Conclusion?

Links play a vital role in the AI era; they are a direct signal of credibility for LLM models, which, in turn, is crucial to becoming a trusted source in the eyes of AI. If you are considering positioning in AI (AISO), a well-planned link-building strategy should be an essential element of your plan.

Acquiring links with “good domain metrics” without considering other factors might have worked a while ago, but now it is about much more. Primarily, it is about expertise, topical relevance, and trust in Google’s eyes regarding the sites citing you. Why is this so important?

• External Verification: AI models trust what others say about you more than what you say about yourself on your own site. Therefore, mentions of your brand from trusted sources serve as a check for AI to confirm whether your company is genuinely credible.
• Expert Publications: AI treats articles on industry portals as more neutral and reliable sources than commercial sites. That is why acquiring links from expert, thematic portals is so crucial.
• Citation Signal: Links have become a “vote of confidence”; they decide whether a language model will cite your brand in a summary (AI Overview) or skip it.

Based on our experience and research, in 2026, we recommend a strategy based on three layers of authority building:

1. Stable Layer (Core Authority): In this layer, we focus on acquiring permanent links from trusted sources with high E-E-A-T, which act as an “anchor” for domain authority. They build long-term trust that both AI and Google consider when evaluating a domain.
2. Dynamic Layer (Pulse Authority): Short-term citations, reports, and comments that signal to algorithms that the brand is active and providing fresh data. They provide a “Pulse,” signaling that the brand is alive, operating, and reacting to industry changes. Fresh data in current reports confirms the timeliness and authenticity of the source in the eyes of Google and AI.
3. Contextual Layer (Intent Authority): Content precisely linked to a specific query (e.g., guides) that helps AI match the brand to user intent. These help AI and Google better understand which search intents your site is best suited for. They strengthen semantic visibility, ensuring the brand appears where the user has a specific goal.

Traditional success metrics we have used until now, like clicks or CTR, are being replaced in the AI era by so-called algorithmic trust metrics, namely:

• Share of Voice: The frequency with which LLM models cite the brand compared to competitors.
• Bot Hits: Log analysis checking how often AI bots (e.g., GPTBot) visit and analyze your content.
• LLM Sentiment: Measuring whether AI speaks about your brand in a positive context.

Our research and regular analysis of our clients’ visibility in LLMs have confirmed our belief that a link-building strategy must be adaptive and multidimensional because every model has a different logic:

• Perplexity: Requires fresh data and reports (very high reactivity).
• ChatGPT: Publishing on sites that already rank highly is key.
• Copilot (Bing): Focuses on stability and trust in professional, external sources.
• AI Overviews (Google): Blog posts written for long-tail phrases and well-cited sources work best.
• Claude: Rigor and reliability are the foundation of this model’s strategy. Content should be unique and in-depth.

Remember that Link Building in the age of AI is primarily about building brand credibility. Since a complete website with content can now be created with AI in a few hours, credibility and authority will be the advantage in the eyes of Google and LLM models.