Impact is an automatic estimate of how much a story is likely to
affect one website, weighing who published it, whether Google has
confirmed a ranking change, how many outlets ran it, and whether
the wording implies work on your site. It reads headlines, not
your analytics — treat it as triage, not a verdict.
Links from other websites remain one of the strongest signals search engines use to judge which pages deserve to rank. They are also where small sites most often go wrong — either ignoring links…