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.
Where a small business gets real links and what the platform shows about them is covered in Backlinks today.
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?
For Google, a proven one: in local search and on Google Maps, Google explicitly names the number of reviews and positive ratings as a ranking factor. How much other AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity weigh reviews, no provider discloses. It is plausible that they read them, because review profiles are public — it is not proven.
What matters is the interplay: reviews work best when your name, address and phone number are the same everywhere and your website confirms the same facts in machine-readable form. So look after your Google Business Profile, ask every customer for a review, not just the happy ones, and reply calmly — especially to critical voices. Selectively asking only for positive reviews, or offering incentives for them, is prohibited by Google.
What is allowed and what is not is covered in detail in Google reviews and AI recommendations: what really counts.
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.