Local link building is the work of getting links to a business's website from sites in its own area: trade associations, chambers of commerce, the local paper, suppliers, and the teams and events it sponsors. On 11 November 2026 we checked the backlinks of 42 local businesses on page one of Google in Milan, Bologna and Bari: 33 had not a single link from a local source of that kind, and 88% of the domains linking to them were auto-generated or spam sites.
When a local business decides to "do link building", it usually:
- buys a package of links on city portals nobody reads;
- signs up to fifty directories, assuming each one is a backlink;
- looks at a competitor's backlink count in a tool and panics.
None of the three gets a link from someone who actually knows the business. And those links often already exist, they just aren't linked.
When we measured the mentions of two companies we work with, Macropix and Scovaventi, we found that 82% of the sites naming Macropix don't link to it (233 domains out of 284). For Scovaventi the share is 94%. The full test, run on 10 October 2026, is in our guide to off-page SEO tools.
Does the same apply to a plumber or a dental practice?
Yes, with an advantage: local sources are few, you know them by name and hardly any competitor has taken them yet.
In this guide:
- how much links count for the map and for organic results, according to Google and the Whitespark 2026 survey;
- our test on 42 local business websites and what actually links to them;
- eight sources of local links, easiest first;
- Google's rules on sponsorships;
- how to find the opportunities in your town and how to measure them.
Let's get into it.
How much links count for a local business (more in organic results than on the map)
Links do count for a local business, but they carry far more weight in the town's organic results than in the local pack, the box with the map and three listings. Google lists them as part of prominence, one of the three local ranking criteria alongside relevance and distance.
The exact wording is in Google Business Profile Help (checked on 11 November 2026): "Prominence means how well-known a business is." And a little later: "This factor's also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have."
How much they weigh, Google doesn't say. The usual reference is Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors 2026, published on 6 November 2025: 47 experts scoring 187 factors, split between the local pack, local organic results and visibility in AI search.
| Link factor | Local pack and Maps | Local organic | AI search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality and authority of links to the domain | 31st (122) | 3rd (187) | 29th (119) |
| Links to the domain from industry sites | 39th (114) | 5th (175) | 23rd (125) |
| Links to the domain from local sites | 27th (125) | 13th (167) | 30th (118) |
| Links from local sites to the profile's landing page | 26th (126) | n/a | n/a |
| Quality of links to the profile's landing page | 25th (127) | 29th (136) | n/a |
In local organic results, links rank 3rd, 5th and 13th. In the local pack they drop to between 25th and 39th.
In plain terms: on the map, category, distance and reviews come first. Links mostly move the results below the map, where your website and your location pages sit. The full picture of the three rankings is in our local SEO guide.
The test: what really links to 42 businesses on page one (88 domains in 100 are noise)
On the websites of local businesses that rank on page one, links from real local sources are almost absent: of the 2,808 referring domains we classified, only 17 were associations, news sites, events, suppliers or public bodies.
The method. On 11 November 2026 we pulled Google's first page for "idraulico" (plumber), "dentista" (dentist) and "commercialista" (accountant) in Milan, Bologna and Bari with DataForSEO: 9 Italian searches, all with a local pack and an AI Overview. From the organic results we kept only the websites of single businesses, dropping portals, directories and multi-city networks: 42 sites. For each one we downloaded the referring domains from DataForSEO's backlink index (up to 100 per site) and classified them by domain name, cautiously: when in doubt, "unclassifiable".
| Type of linking domain | Domains | Share | Sites with at least one (of 42) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public bodies, councils, schools | 0 | 0% | 0 |
| Trade associations and professional bodies | 2 | 0.1% | 2 |
| News and local information sites | 7 | 0.2% | 5 |
| Clubs, theatres, events, charities | 3 | 0.1% | 3 |
| Suppliers, brands, insurer networks | 5 | 0.2% | 3 |
| Directories and listing portals | 218 | 7.8% | 40 |
| Auto-generated or spam sites | 2,480 | 88.3% | 42 |
| Unclassifiable | 93 | 3.3% | 27 |
Three things the test tells us.
The median is 68 referring domains, but almost none is a real local link. The same group of auto-generated domains appears on nearly every site, from the plumber in Bari to the accountant in Milan: nobody went looking for them, and they usually do neither good nor harm (we saw the same with visilay.com's own data in our piece on negative SEO).
33 sites out of 42 have not one link from an association, a news site, an event, a supplier or a public body. Local papers from the same city appear three times in the whole sample. Public bodies, zero.
Directories are almost always there, just not the ones people recommend. The most frequent are small Italian aggregator sites: localitybiz.it alone links to 23 of them. PagineGialle, Italy's Yellow Pages, links to 6 sites out of 42.
So links don't help you reach page one?
The test doesn't say that. It says these competitors have profiles almost empty of real signals, and that five links from real sources in your town can be enough to stand out: the competitor with 70 referring domains, looked at one by one, has none. How to read a report without being fooled by the big number is in our guide to checking backlinks.
One limit to declare: only 2 of the 42 sites were also in the local pack, too few to say anything about links and the map.
Have you ever looked at who really links to your site?
You've just seen that, on average, nearly nine in ten domains linking to a local business are noise. Before you buy a link package, let's look together at your profile and those of the three competitors ahead of you: which links are real, which local sources none of you has yet, and where to start.
Book a strategy callWhere local links come from (eight sources, easiest first)
The local links worth having come from people with a real relationship with the business: an association you belong to, a supplier you install for, a team you sponsor, a paper that covered something you did. Here are the eight sources, in order of effort.
1. Trade associations and professional bodies
Your local chamber of commerce, a trade association, the professional body for your sector: many publish a member directory. If you already pay the fee, ask for the listing to link to your site. In our sample 2 sites out of 42 had one, including a Milan medical centre linked from Assolombarda, the Milan-area business association.
2. Chambers of commerce and local projects
Chambers publish projects, grants and lists of businesses taking part in fairs or initiatives. It isn't an automatic link: you have to look for it on your local chamber's site, project by project.
3. Suppliers, brands and partner networks
The most underrated source: the boiler maker listing its service centres, the window brand with a map of its fitters, the insurer with its network of approved practices. In our sample two dental practices were linked from health insurance networks. We cover this in our SEO guide for builders too, where suppliers are the first source to ask.
4. Local papers and city websites
An opening, a figure about the neighbourhood, a project with a school: a paper needs a story, not a link request. The method is digital PR, scaled down to one town.
5. Clubs, events, theatres and charities
The sponsors page of the youth team, the local festival, a theatre season: a medical centre in our Bologna sample was linked from a theatre in the province. Before you sponsor, check the site has a sponsors page.
6. B2B customers and partners
References work the other way too: the customer who lists its suppliers, the architects you work with, the company with a "partners" page. For businesses selling to other businesses it's often the main source, as we explain in our B2B local SEO guide.
7. Unlinked mentions
Every page that names you without a link is an email to write, and the easiest: the writer already knows you. It's the 82% from Macropix at the start.
8. Directories: a few, and for data consistency
Directories mainly confirm your name, address and phone number; they don't bring links that carry much weight. Which ones matter in the UK is in our guide to local citations, and how to keep them aligned in our piece on NAP consistency.
Sponsorships and links: what Google says (a sponsored link is fine)
A link earned through a sponsorship is legitimate as long as it's marked as such: Google treats links exchanged for money, goods or services as spam only when they're meant to manipulate rankings and aren't qualified.
Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links "primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings". The examples include "Exchanging goods or services for links". Straight after, though, Google says buying and selling links is a normal part of the web "for advertising and sponsorship purposes", and that it isn't a violation if the links are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".
The page on qualifying outbound links (last updated 10 December 2025) asks for sponsored on "advertisements or paid placements".
So a sponsored link is useless?
No. It brings visits from your area and gets you named next to your town, which is exactly the prominence Google talks about (more in our guide to nofollow links). Our position: sponsor what you'd sponsor anyway, ask for the link and don't insist it's follow.
How to find the opportunities in your town (searches to copy)
You find them in two ways: searching Google for pages that list the sponsors, members and partners in your town, and looking at who links to the competitors ahead of you.
| What you're looking for | Google search (replace Leeds) |
|---|---|
| Associations with member lists | "members directory" Leeds |
| Sponsor pages | "our sponsors" Leeds |
| Youth teams | "sponsors" "junior" football club Leeds |
| Suppliers with installer networks | "approved installers" OR "find an installer" Leeds |
| Local events | "sponsors" festival Leeds |
| Mentions of your name | "Business name" -yoursite.co.uk |
Then open the referring domains of the top three competitors and keep only those with a name you recognise: associations, papers, councils, clubs. There will be few: that's your short list.
How many local links you need and how to measure them (five real sources beat seventy domains)
There's no number that works for everyone: it depends on what the competitors in your search have. In our Italian sample the real bar was very low, because 33 sites out of 42 had no local sources at all.
How to measure, without paid tools:
- Search Console, Links report: who links to you according to Google;
- GA4 referral traffic: a good local link brings visits, spam doesn't;
- a sheet of local sources: source, date of request, outcome.
Where the link points matters too. In the Whitespark survey, links to the page connected to your Google profile rank 25th and 26th for the local pack: if you have several branches, ask for the link to point to the branch page, not the home page. The full check of local signals, links included, is in our local SEO audit checklist.
Local links and AI answers (a mention counts as much as a link)
For answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews on local searches, the experts in the Whitespark survey give weight to a business being named by sources in its area, with or without a link: links from local sites rank 30th among AI visibility factors and citations from local sites 25th. The report sums it up: "In AI SEO, mentions (citations) are the new link".
None of this guarantees a citation: it makes the business easier to recognise. Our test on how AI tools pick local businesses is in our guide to local AI visibility.
What not to do (the shortcuts that cost you)
- "Local link" packages on city portals full of undisclosed sponsored posts, or mass directory submissions: "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" is an explicit example of link spam for Google.
- A disavow file made out of fear of the spam domains you see in a report: in our test all 42 sites had them. When it's really needed is in our guide to the Google disavow tool.
Local link building FAQs
It depends: they confirm your business details, but as links they carry little weight. In our test 40 sites out of 42 had directory links and almost none had links from real local sources. The few directories that actually show up in searches for your sector are enough.
Yes. It brings visits from your area, ties you to your town's name and adds to the prominence Google describes. For AI answers the mention counts, link or no link.
No, if the link is meant to lift you on Google and isn't marked as sponsored: Google's spam policies explicitly list exchanging money, goods or services for links. A real sponsorship with a rel="sponsored" link is allowed.
It depends on the competitors in your search. In our sample of 42 sites in Milan, Bologna and Bari, 33 had no links from associations, news sites, events, suppliers or public bodies: a few real links are often enough to stand out.
It depends: with one location the home page is fine. With several, ask for a link to the branch page connected to its Google profile, which is a local pack factor in the Whitespark 2026 survey.
Summary (in five lines)
Local link = a site in your area that really knows you.
It weighs a lot in organic results, less on the map.
Competitors usually have none: 33 sites out of 42.
Sponsorships yes, with a sponsored link.
Unlinked mentions first, then everything else.
The idea we take from the test is a different one. For a local business, the number of referring domains mostly measures how many crawlers have found the site. The link profile that matters can be read in one column: the names you recognise. If you want help building that column, our SEO consultancy starts right there.
