1800 links on one page - can this hurt a site?

[webbyman]

Hi Chaps,

Can anyone tell me if we have 1800 links on one page our site can be penalised with a massive drop in rankings
You see this page has all of our products on there and before november was ranking on the first page for our important keywords.
Now none of these products on the page appear in searches at all.
What can i do please?

Webby.

[jbinbpt]

Hi Webby,
Welcome to Webmasterworld.

The quick answer is Yes. That is way too much stuff on one page.
What you can do is to break this content into a logical structure that will be easy for both users and SE's to follow. Once you have done this submit a site mape to Google and see if they follow. You will have to give it some time to recover.

[RichTC]

I think in the Google webmaster info it states stick to 100 or 200 links is it a page?

From sites we have worked over the years i have found that the googlebot is able to read and follow a good number of links perhaps even as high as 6-700 on a page as its technology has advanced. I think once you pass 1000 links you must be taking a chance.

If you have so many products why not break them down into sections and build pages around those sections and list them that way and break it up a bit. It cant be easy for users to search that many.

Im not sure if Google has taken action against your site, perhaps gg can comment but it could be as simple as the straw that broke the cammels back, you just went one link to many and the bot cant follow the entire page.

Good luck anyway

[webbyman]

Thanks.

Can this effect my index page ranking too guys?

Be good if the google person could comment too.

Webbyman

[Woz]

Hmmm, I question whether you would actually be penalised, but it would certainly not have the dexired effect in that the majority of links would probably not be parsed. As stated above, better to break it into a number of themed pages.

Onya
Woz

[webbyman]

So how many links are allowed for a sitemap, do you reckon then please? on one page sorry.

Webbyman

[moltar]

Don't think in terms of Google, think in terms of users. Do you think it would be usefull for a user to have 1800 links on one page? IMHO you should divide your site map into ~ 50 links per page... Otherwise it defeats it's purpose.

[minnapple]

I really doubt if your site map dropped your rankings.
You can try to paginate the map but first I would check to see if the pages have been place in the supplemental index [si].

If your are in the [si], it could because you are using vendor supplied product descriptions that are also being used by mutliple retailers.

To get out of [si] you either need to be stronger than others using the same content or you need to change your content.

[webbyman]

Eh!

What are supplementals, how can these hurt my website please?, can i get rid of these?
I am now lost completely

Webby.