Methods for acquiring links have come a long way, but they are still one of the most important ranking factors used by
the major search engine algorithms.
Not exact matches
High quality backlinks are a
major piece of Google's
algorithm for
Search Engine Results Page ranking.
A
major part of this, as you may have heard, is SEO (
Search Engine Optimization) in which a website is tailored to be easily read by (usually) Google's
algorithm and ranked highly.
As
major search engines like Google continue to tweak their
algorithms, website publishers need to stay ahead of the curve so their sites don't fall in the
search rankings.
The
major search engines use proprietary
algorithms to measure rank and display web pages in their SERPs.
The
major search engines recently adopted a new hypertext standard called «no follow» that allows you to link to a page online without the
search algorithms interpreting your link as an endorsement of the site.
By the end of 2011, I expect one of the two
major search engines (my guess: Bing) will turn SEO on its head significantly by increasing the ranking impact of social media endorsements within their ranking
algorithm.