Backlink
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat good backlinks as a recommendation. For AI assistants, how often and how your brand is mentioned elsewhere counts as well — even without a link.
A backlink is created when another website links to yours. For search engines it has always been one of the strongest signals: a site that gets links from respected, relevant sites is considered more trustworthy. Quality matters, not quantity — bought or swapped links violate Google's guidelines and can do harm.
For AI assistants the weight shifts: they also get to know a business through mentions in the press, directories, forums or trade articles, often without any link at all. Such mentions belong to earned media.
Building backlinks is relationship and PR work, not a software feature. Once Bing Webmaster Tools is connected, btlabs Core shows which backlinks Bing knows for your most-linked pages, including the link texts — you can analyze them and learn from them there, but building them happens outside.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions.
Is social media important for AI visibility?
Social media is rarely the direct source an AI cites, but an important indirect lever: it creates the awareness and web mentions that AI systems treat as a strong signal. Specialist posts on business networks and video platforms in particular show the strongest correlations with AI visibility. For most businesses: social media doesn't replace a clean digital foundation, but amplifies its effect.
What role do Google reviews play in AI recommendations?
A big one. AI assistants base their recommendations on publicly available sources — and review profiles are among the strongest signals of how a business is perceived. The number, recency and content of reviews all feed in, as does whether and how you respond to them.
What matters is the interplay: reviews carry the most weight when your name, address and phone number are consistent everywhere and your website confirms the same facts in machine-readable form. So look after your Google Business Profile actively, ask satisfied customers for a review and respond professionally — especially to critical voices. That is how the coherent overall picture emerges from which AI systems build their recommendations.
Has classic SEO become obsolete with AI search?
No. Google AI overviews mostly cite pages that already rank well classically. SEO remains the ticket in — AI optimisation (GEO) is the extension with citable answers, structure and visible authority.