Evidence Technical SEO

Links are weighted by prominence, not counted equally

Google's 'Reasonable Surfer' patent describes weighting a link by how likely a user is to click it.

ID
SS-EV-026
Confidence
High · 85
Evidence
Strong
Updated
2026-07-08

The claim

Internal links placed in prominent, contextually relevant positions pass more value than boilerplate or footer links.

What the evidence shows

The Reasonable Surfer model assigns each link a probability of being followed based on features such as position, font, anchor text and surrounding context. Rather than treating every link on a page equally, links a real user is more likely to click are given greater weight. This reframes internal linking as an exercise in prominence and relevance, not sheer link count.

Source

Source
Google 'Reasonable Surfer' patent
Type
Patent
Year
2010
Strength
Strong

How SearchScore applies it

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