In and out links on a website

too many out link can harm me? Will it Dilute my PageRank?

[meetzah]

First of all, please excuse my spelling. I am not a native English speaker. Now, here are the facts:

I have a website that has a small number of outbound links on first page (2 or 3) and about 1,070 inbounds according to Google.

About 2 months ago I started a new section on my website (placed on a new page, not on a new subdomain) containing a web directory. Because it transfers PR and is free, I got over 1000 websites listed pretty soon, and few of them even placed a reciprocal alto I never asked for one.

Now I wonder: can this large number of outbound dilute my PR (now is 4 , and before this directory was 4 too) or do harm to my position is SERPS? It is a good idea to place a "nofollow" tag after those links?

Meetzah,

[flanok]

It won't dilute you PR ranking but it will affect your search engine ranking.
The G only likes outgoing links to go to a sites relevant to yours and will punish otherwise. if you are now saying you have 1,000 links going out to different sites with different subjects, this I believe can only harm you.
One way links is the best formula or at least ensure every link leaving your site is to a relevant subject useful to your visitor. And even then the G will disagree with your relevacy sometimes.

[daveVk]

Provide this web directory is providing a usefull service to your visitors I would not change anything. With 1000 links you need to catagorize them someway to be of use to your visitors. Do not include off topic links.

[lammert]

It won't dilute you PR ranking ...

Sorry, but I don't agree with you. Every site has a fixed amount of PR it can splash around. Without outgoing links, all this PR is returned to internal pages of the site, with outgoing links some of the PR is leaking, leaving less of the PR available for the internal pages.

Please don't forget to read this thread [webmasterworld.com] about Google and link directories. Google removed many sites with link directories from their index about one year ago. You might change your mind about keeping yours after reading that thread.

[meetzah]

Thank you guys,

My 1000 links are categorised and the directory is structurated on about 30 categories. It contains a search form so I think it is pretty useful for my visitors.

I will read the thread lammert told me about and hope I will find more information. Also, I know that G banned some directory-linke websites, buy hey, why there are still thousands of them? Also, I think most of the directories banned by G were using DMOZ data (so banned for "duplicate content").