Google’s own Matt Cutts released a video on YouTube discussing the future of backlinks and how it will be less important over time. Although Matt did discussed backlinks in Google ranking algorithm will still be useful in order to assess the basic reputation of pages and sites for years to come.
Google is getting better at figuring out how an expert user would use a particular page to match their information needs by getting better with actual and natural language trying to figure out conversational speech efforts by understanding the meaning of the content.
Watch the full video to hear everything Cutts has to say about the future of backlinks.