100 links max?

[Tonearm]

Will Google really only register 100 links per page?

[BigDave]

No, they will register hundreds or even thousands.

[Tonearm]

Do you know what their 100 link maximum per page pertains to?

[tedster]

It's old advice - Google improved their crawl infrastructure since then.

[Tonearm]

OK thanks, very good to know.

[HarryM]

My understanding that the 100 link maximum was advise originally given by Google several years ago concerning sitemaps.

If you are talking about 100+ links on a normal page, then I think there may be problems. I suspect (without any proof!) that Google takes shortcuts in determining page PR. If there are too many internal links in a site, this may upset Google's calculations and result in some pages getting less PR than one would expect, or getting greyed out, or going supplemental.

[soapystar]

if google was taking shortcuts determining page rank there wouldn't be any page rank..it would be something else entirely....therefore i suspect (without any proof) than you are wrong...
unless you are talking about new pages given a temporary ranking till a full iteration has taken place with that page included...

[myk02]

I do not agreed with Tedster's statement that its a old advice. Last time Google has updated their Webmaster Guidelines in June 2007 and they have clearly mentioned in two different sentences that:

1. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
2. Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

Although I don't think its a hard and fast rule to keep links lower than 100 but the reason for this statement is to increase the quality of the web page, so that bots can properly crawl your complete links.

[tedster]

I can see where you're coming from, myk02. I agree, it's still very good advice - but it's no longer true that links past 100 or so will not be indexed at all. My apology for any confusion, I should have chosen my language more precisely.

[piatkow]

Might be total coincidence but a site that I built for a local arts organisation had a totally relevant links page that gradually grew to well over 200 links (artists, venues, music stores etc). One day the site just dropped off the bottom of the SERPS.

I restructured with four categories on separate pages and it is back in the top 5 for key searches.