Do backlinks still matter for AI visibility
This is one of the most common questions we hear, because the SEO industry trained people to treat links as a magic lever. AI visibility does not work that way.
Short answer
No.
Business Visibility Group does not treat backlinks as a factor for AI visibility. AI systems care about whether a business is clearly defined and consistently described, not how many sites link to it.
Why backlink advice keeps showing up anyway
Backlink sellers keep pushing links because links are easy to package, easy to price, and easy to promise. They can sell volume, show a spreadsheet, and call it progress.
The problem is simple. AI systems do not work like old search ranking systems. They do not need a popularity signal to understand what a business is. They need clarity.
What AI systems actually need from a business
AI tools learn patterns. They repeat what stays consistent. If your business identity is unclear, links will not fix it. If your business identity is clear, you do not need a link campaign to be understood.
- Your business name, category, and offering need to match across your own pages.
- Your service descriptions need to use the same language in more than one place.
- Your facts need to agree, hours, locations, leadership, and scope should not conflict.
- Your pages need to answer real questions in plain language.
- Your site needs enough coverage that a system can form a stable understanding.
That is what builds recognition. That is what prevents mix ups. That is what makes a business show up when buyers ask the right question.
The backlink industry sells comfort, not outcomes
Most backlink packages are built for one thing. They give a buyer something to point to so they feel like work was done.
In practice, link sellers are selling a story. The story is that a business can buy authority like a commodity. AI visibility destroys that story because identity is not a commodity. It is built through consistency.
One real exception
Links can sometimes help a page get discovered or re discovered by crawlers. That is not AI visibility. That is distribution.
If a link causes your page to be found faster, that can speed up how quickly your updated wording spreads across the web. But the link did not create trust. The link did not create understanding. The words did.
What to do instead of buying links
If you want AI visibility, stop chasing shortcuts and fix the underlying problem. Make your business easy to understand and hard to confuse with anyone else.
- Write a clear one sentence description of what you do and who you do it for.
- Repeat that description across your core pages using the same wording.
- Publish direct answers to the questions your buyers ask.
- Remove conflicting claims and outdated service descriptions.
- Make sure your about page, service pages, and contact page all agree.
That work produces stable visibility across AI tools. Link buying does not.