Google updated their link spam policy wording

Google removed the line "Google uses links as a factor in determining relevancy of web pages" from their Link Spam guidelines.

It might be a small wording change that's not worth investigating, but Marie Haynes (who pointed this out) thinks it might be a signal that Google is moving towards vector search in determining which content is likely to be relevant to a search query.

So, where does that leave links? I'm sure they still use links but they are doing their best to move away from them, so this could be the start of this move.