Number of links on a webpage

does Google count the links marked with nofollow?

[myk02]

Hello,

I have question on one of the Google Webmaster's Guideline point:

"Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than
100)"

Does Google counts the links marked with nofolow?

For example I havea webpage with 120 links and 30 of them are marked with nofolow, so how many links Google considered on that page, 80 or 120? Kindly share your thoughts!

Sincerely,

[tedster]

It's not a hard and fast rule. I have pages with more than 100 links and it's clear that the later links are still being followed. In fact, I remember reading a post either from Matt Cutts or somewhere on Google Groups that this 100 links per page guideline had been relaxed a bit. There's too many sites out there with more than 100 links in their dhtml drop-down menu alone.

Still, it makes sense to watch the total number of links on a page, rather than to push it as far as possible. Every link takes one more slice of the PageRank voted to the target page.

[myk02]

Dear Tedster,

I guess you didn't read my question. I am not talking about the rule of 100 links or either it will crawls or not.

My question is what's Google behaviour with the links tagged with NOFOLOW? Does they count it as link or not?

Looking forward to hear your point of view!

Thanks

[tedster]

This is only a best guess -- the 100 links is a guideline for getting indexed, or processed by Google's back end. So if you go over the number of links that Google will process, it doesn't matter whether some have a rel="nofollow" attribute or not. In order for Google to even SEE the attribute, a link needs to be processed.

[Reno]

Here are some additional comments [googleblog.blogspot.com] from Google:

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel="nofollow") on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. This isn't a negative vote for the site where the comment was posted; it's just a way to make sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

... We encourage you to use the rel="nofollow" attribute anywhere that users can add links by themselves, including within comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists. Comment areas receive the most attention, but securing every location where someone can add a link is the way to keep spammers at bay.

.....................

[edited by: Reno at 10:24 pm (utc) on July 9, 2007]

[Whitey]

I'll just back up what Tedster has said, in terms of the number of links on a page [ not including no follows ] with an experiment that we did last year with up to 400 links on a page.

Google followed all the links well and ranked the pages. I see no difference with the processing of nofollow links.

However, this was an experiment, and we keep page sizes under 50kb and less than the recommended 100 links to avoid page strength drain.

[Korrd]

I believe myk02's question is about how Google counts the total number of links on a page. Myk02 framed it in terms of Google's 100 link suggested limit but it would also apply to say, dividing up the pagerank pie. Would the outgoing pagerank in myk02's example be divided into 90 or 120 slices?

[fishfinger]

If you want to GUARANTEE that those links are not counted in any way then use non-spiderable links withou an 'href' tag - Javascript or a form.

But I really wouldn't use 'nofollow' for any internal links myself.

Google's help gives examples of them only being used for OBLs. All the comments I've ever seen from Google/Matt Cutts are that they are intended to protect your site's OBLs from being abused.

I personally therefore consider them a big flag that questionable things might be happening on your site - whether or not you are involved.

If your aim is to manipulate PageRank it's a rather obvious way to do it.

If you don't trust the sites you link to, why are you linking to them?