Google Says "Links Matter Less"–We Looked at 1M SERPs to See If It's True

I appreciate the data, but the conclusions are specific to ranking for high volume searches. It doesn't tell us much about other factors, such as the indexing of marginal domains.

My suspicion is that links from a site like Reddit, with a positive sentiment attached are highly valuable. Volume of links, without any discernment of quality is a misleading metric at best. The author records that disavowing links decreased search traffic. If all links are equal, why would it be necessary to disavow (bad) links? Perhaps disavowed links correlate with spam and are a penalty unto themselves. There's some honesty in the post when they mention the problems with correlation.