Google is only a proxy to The Internet, nothing more. There's a bucketload of untapped traffic coming from sources Google could only dream of. I found this out by mistake when I had AWStats running for way longer than it should have, and it hoovered up globs of what we would call 'big data' today.
Some of the referal links are still alive today and funneling terrabytes of metadata through their servers; a practice I thought was more or less frowned upon, but still serving SEOs today. Still so much to tap into, still like 2012 too!
Google has been trying to put a damper on linking from your website to another one for years now. My first website in 1996 I developed the first thing I did was go to websites that had similar customers and we would exchange links so our customers would find out about our complimentary services. Now that freaks google out because they prefer everyone to see Google ads when searching so finding websites must be done inside of Google otherwise they threaten you to take you out of Google search.
Some of the referal links are still alive today and funneling terrabytes of metadata through their servers; a practice I thought was more or less frowned upon, but still serving SEOs today. Still so much to tap into, still like 2012 too!