Today, July 22, 2026, Google officially launched AI Overviews and conversational AI Mode in France .
France was one of the last major markets to get it. Now it's here.

For two years, French businesses watched from the sidelines while the rest of the world figured out what AI search actually does to traffic. Now it's their turn.

Here's what the data from other markets says about what happens next.

The data is clear: backlinks are still a valuable part of any SEO strategy. Nearly 70% of marketers say backlinks have a "big impact" on search rankings, and 30% say they have a "moderate impact". The top result in Google SERPs has nearly 4x more backlinks than positions two through ten. Marketers are spending $5,000 $10,000 monthly on link building, and a single low-authority link now runs around $300 almost 8% higher than last year.

But the game has changed.

What's Different in 2026

Yes, backlinks are still one of the strongest signals Google uses to judge whether a page deserves to rank. For competitive commercial queries, they remain one of the clearest ways to separate two pages with similar content.

But the math changed.

In the age of AI search, backlinks influence visibility differently. They act on the retrieval layer the live search index that grounds AI answers rather than the model's frozen training weights. That split explains why studies measuring pure ChatGPT answers sometimes find links matter less, while studies measuring AI Overviews or Perplexity find they still matter.

The shift in 2026: