This is not a new topic, in 2015 we covered that Google implied external links are not a ranking factor and in 2016 we covered that Google said external links are NOT a ranking factor and then a third-party study said external links ARE a ranking factor. Got to love it, right?
In any event, in the Friday Google hangout at the 27:34 minute mark on Google+, John Mueller addressed it again, but didn't say out right that it was not a ranking factor. Although he implied it again.
Question:
Do links within the page to other pages influence quality of that page? How can you tell that the user found what he was looking for when he landed from the search results of the page containing links to other pages?
Answer:
Sometimes links on the page can improve the quality of a page, but I think that's something where you wouldn't want to see that as kind of an artificial factor. Just because there are links on a page doesn't mean it's necessarily good.We saw that, I don't know, way in the beginning, when people would put links to Google, or Wikipedia, or CNN on their website, and assume that search engines would be naive and think, oh, they're linking to these well-known websites, therefore, the content itself must be good.And that's definitely not the case.So you can add value to your website by having links on those pages, but it's not the case that just because you have links then we'll suddenly see your website as being higher quality.
Watch it yourself:
Forum discussion at Google+.