131 SEOs Surveyed, Search Intent Tops Ranking Factors

SEO tool company GPI ran a survey of 131 SEO professionals on Google ranking factors, and Search Engine Land covered the findings on September 9. Ratings across 103 candidate factors, scored on a 7-point scale, added up to 13,665 in total. The survey's questions were newly built to reflect the spread of AI search, Google's leaked API documents, antitrust trial testimony, and recent algorithm updates.

Among individual factors, search intent received the highest rating. 57.1% of respondents named relevance as one of their top three factors, and 54.8% named backlinks, putting backlinks second overall. Content quality ranked third overall, and within that category, content built on original research or first-party data scored especially well.

On backlinks, the responses emphasized source over sheer number. Links from domains with real visitors and topical relevance scored better.

The same pattern held for content. AI-generated content that a person had reviewed thoroughly and that added unique value was rated positively, while mass-produced AI content with no real value was rated negatively.

This result runs counter to Google's own past statements. Google's Gary Illyes had previously said links are not among Google's top three ranking factors. Yet the SEO practitioners in this survey did the opposite, ranking backlinks second overall.

Among user-related items, user satisfaction and whether a searcher actually got the result they wanted both scored highly. Brand signals such as branded search volume and online reputation also scored well.

Technical SEO items, including crawling and indexing, site health, and internal links, scored consistently high. Meta descriptions, on the other hand, ranked near the bottom, seen as having little direct effect on rankings. Negative signals included spammy backlinks and behavior where searchers immediately return to the search results.

The factors that rose to the top in this survey come down to four: search intent, relevance, backlinks, and content quality.

SEO professional Cyrus Shepard said of the results, "reports of backlinks' death have been greatly exaggerated." Search Engine Land read the results as meaning that success in search depends less on matching keywords and more on satisfying what a searcher actually wants.

In Korea

This survey gathered the views of 131 SEO professionals, and the material does not state their nationalities or which markets they mainly work in. Whether the same order of factors applies to Korean-language search cannot be confirmed from this result alone.

Source: Search Engine Land, Danny Goodwin, September 9, 2026. Checked September 15, 2026. Read the original