Is link popularity still a big fact in Google ranking?

Hi, I'm not expert in seo much but I see some different in Google search results today. I see some of sites that ranked top 5 in some competitives keyword don't have much PR or much backlink compare to sites below top 5 but I see their contents are great. I think Google pay less weight on link popularity for now. What do you think guys?

Sxperm

 

G still puts links into the mix when it works through sites with the G algos,and I do not think links can be ignored in building up a site, or indeed in maintaining a site upside profile in respect to indexing, serps and all seo aspects

 

I would say that the more competitive the search terms, the more PR (and targeted anchor text) you need. You can easily rank for low competition terms with only on page content, though.

 

In case of google it is very usefull, increases the pr as well as relevancy of your website.

 

First you must know
link popularity != quanity of backlinks

its quality of backlinks.

And yes its big factor and remain big factor in future to rank your website in SERPs.

 

Yep... and will always be... but there is more to it... like LSI factor...

 

absolutly as Manish Pandey said.

Nothing matters more then link popularity.

 

Yes link popularity is still one of the factor of google in ranking. Because if you have link to other site that has higher PR your site will also given the chance to increased your PR. And keywords of the anckor text of your link partners can increased your keyword density. That is one factor in google ranking.

 

If google ignored backlinks, it wouldnt have any way of knowing whether the site was as popular as cnn.com or cnq.com...

 

Link popularity will always be a big factor. Maybe determining link popularity will get more and more sophisticated as SE's become more smarter.

So keep on developing backlinks...

 

It's a combination of factors, number of links + the quality of links linking to those links.

 

Ya it is very important for google ranking or google Indexing also.

 

Yes links are nearly everything. Especially quality links. A few quality links will do more for a site than thousands of recips.

 

Links are very important and I think they will stay important when it comes to ranking a site.

 

I see many high ranking sites barely mention the keyword in the content. However upon looking at their backlinks and anchor text it becomes clear why they rank so highly in the search engines.