"Activating" Links - Do External Links Have to Be Clicked On to Really Have Value?

[kbrake]

I heard an SEO talk about the concept of "activating" a link - meaning that if an external link to your site exists, but google doesn't detect that it has gotten any actual clicks, they will significantly discount or ignore the value of the link. Obviously between Chrome, toolbars, and GA, google does have a lot of ways to detect whether a link has gotten clicks.  What is the SEOmoz take on this issue?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

False. If Google crawled the website and found the link, it is "activated". Google cannot track link clicks for the majority of websites. It would be unfair and erroneous to only support links that they can analyze to be clicked.

In addition, Matt Cutt's claims that the webspam team does not use Analytics for SERPs - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZoesvNUPDQ

[MicahMMG]

BOOM!

Nice answer, with an authoritative source no less.

[kbrake]

Awesome. Thanks!