Time Taken By a Link to Affect Ranking

Many people wonder how long it takes for Google to assign value to a link. Some reports suggest that it takes around three months for a link to get a value from search engines. Although the way these calculations tell things is not quite impressive, it is very much useful in learning about real-time Penguin calculations.

So, does it really take 3 months for a link to affect rankings?

One of the assumptions that people used to have from past 10 years is that it takes three months for a link to affect websites’ position in search engine result pages. However, it can be safely assumed now that this influence is happening faster thanks to the advancement in hardware upgrades and algorithmic advancements made at the Google’s end. Now, search engines are faster than they had been 10 years ago. So, we can say that links can now affect rankings faster than the way they had been affecting 10 years ago.

Evidence that link effectiveness has become efficient

First we need to keep in mind the scenario that Google Penguin has become the part of Google’s core algorithm. And it is now working in real-time environment. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the value is assigned to a link in much quicker manner now. The real time operation of Google’s Penguin makes is pretty much possible for any link to come under the spotlight much sooner than three months. As a matter of fact, a period of three months for link evaluation doesn’t seem quite reasonable in this faster web.

Given the speed of the Google’s operations, a period of one week to fifteen days for a link to become effective for ranking seems quite realistic. But it is quite different matter whether or not the link really makes the difference for overall ranking of a website. One or few links may not change affect much the ranking of a website.

What if change in rankings occurs after three months?

Sometimes, the change in rankings may occur after three months. In this scenario, you may wonder if this change has happened due to links. Well, there is no way you can get exact answer to that. The reason is that there can be different reasons, i.e. addition of some other links in the website, dropped value of competitor’s website, or an update in Google’s core algorithm.

The change in Google’s algorithm can decide if your competitor’s website is not a good fit for certain keywords. In that case, you can get your site ranked well against those particular keywords. You can also get your website ranked well due to better user index.

Again, three-month time is too much of a time period for Google to decide if it is a single link which is influencing your website’s ranking.

So, what needs to be done?

The best way is to work on good content and high quality links without worrying much about how long it is going to take for Google to give your website a better rank. You may think that each link can contribute in raising rank of a website; and it is surely a good thing. However, an even better approach is to ensure the quality and leave the ranking job to Google.