How to handle a mega navigation (many links)

[jemois]

The site shows widgets from all countries of the world. It has a large navigation consisting of links to each country of the world as category. The problem is how to handle it best. There are 2 options:

1. Using an iframe for the list of countries (which gets for sure indexed by Google, so this won't be an issue);

2. Showing them in a scrollable div, meaning that all the links will be in the source code of every page, passing pagerank and everything since its not ok to make the main navigation nofollow

3. Showing only the list of continents and making a page for each countries from that continent

Which option you think is the best ?

[jemois]

Any ideas which way is better ?

[bhartzer]

I generally would try to stay from iframes.

When you think of navigation, that should go along with your site structure. I don't recommend getting into a situation where you have just one large list of links. Users (and search engines) don't like that.

You need to think about narrowing it down into better "chunks" of information. Users are presented with a small set of links that lead to other pages that then lead to sub-categories, etc.

So, rather than list every country, perhaps they are presented with a world map and they click on a region or continent first, then a country. They are taken to a regional page that lists countries and subcategories there. Or, you do some sort of back-end script that serves up their country based on their location.

[Robert Charlton]

I wouldn't use any of the approaches you've listed. The iframe would be a disaster. And, as bhartzer suggests, the lists you describe would be much too long, particularly so if they're on every page.

You need to think about narrowing it down into better "chunks" of information. Users are presented with a small set of links that lead to other pages that then lead to sub-categories, etc.

Precisely. What chunks you choose and how you further organize them on your site depends on a combination of user expectations, the type of widgets, and geo-related marketing priorities.

The location of the user may also enter into it. I myself would avoid any IP-based location detection, though, and make that a manual choice.