cleaning up external links

Is the other site useful to your visitors?

If it is, keep the link.

If it not, then delete the link.

Reciprocal linking is dead. Link for quality and for traffic, not for PR.

Keep the links that users would value on your site. Delete the rest.

The question of the OP was if Google has a problem with mass deletion of links, not which links to remove.

What is the % of those 50 links to the total, calumniate?

Have you first contacted the sites (of the ones you'd like to continue with) to see if they will replace your recip?

Haste makes waste, I'd say, unless any of the outbound are to farms and whatnot. Drop those like a bad habit.

I think the importance is in the quality, not in the number.

Hence my OA.

Thanks for the replies.. the database I came up with works so that i make re-inclusion requests for the ones that could still be useful and date them in order to give them a second chance. Some i've been deleting because the website simply doesn't exist anymore or has turned into a parked link farm etc. I agree the sites should be of some value..

I guess 50 links is really nothing in the grand scheme of things. We have around 700k inbound links lol. I guess I've answered my own question.. just paranoid of making the wrong step. I think my clean-up is going to help us in the serps.. xfingers!

My question: will google frown upon me if I simply delete lots of these bad links within the next couple of days? I'm talking about ~50+ links or so.

Echoing what others have said, sod Google, provide content for your readers. Scrap dead links, keep links which are useful to your readers. If the search engines like the page, good, if not, that's their bad.

Matt