Gary Illyes from Google revealed at a search conference in Bulgaria that Google needs very few links to rank pages and that over the years, Google has made links less important for SEO. This statement was later confirmed by Illyes on Twitter.

With the March 2024 Core Algorithm Update, Google updated their spam policies documentation to downplay the importance of links for ranking purposes. The documentation previously stated that links were an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages. However, the update removed the word important, and now links are listed as just another factor.

Google likely doesn't need many links due to the advanced AI and natural language understanding used in their algorithms. These technological advancements have given Google the confidence to explicitly state that they don't need as many links for ranking webpages.

The research paper 'Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment' by Jon M. Kleinberg, published around 1998, was significant because it proposed using links as an objective filter for authoritativeness. This concept was influential in the early days of search engines and helped shape how links were used to validate the authority and relevance of websites.

John Mueller from Google advised that there are more useful SEO activities to engage in than focusing on links. He mentioned that over-focusing on links could result in wasting time on activities that don't improve the overall quality of a website.