Mega menus bad for search rankings?

[londrum]

Hello. I’ve got a mega menu on every page of my site which has about 40 links on it. It’s at the bottom of my HTML code, it has <nav> wrapped around it, and disappears completely on mobile, so I don’t think it’s much of a problem, but it’s still a load of identical links on every page.
I’ve been reading up about mega menus and people say that google is pretty good at recognising and ignoring these kind of links now, but I’m just wondering what you think about mega menus and whether they’re bad for SEO.

[not2easy]

If those links are important for users I would make them available for all users and not hide them for mobile visitors. If they are not useful for mobile users then they may not be needed for others?

[Wilburforce]

Generally, as you say. Google is now pretty good at recognising menus, bujt it won't do any harm to wrap the menu in <nav></nav> tags.

My own site has used a mega-menu (drop-down, with all pages accessible from it) for nearly 20 years without any apparent ill-effect. If it is useful for users, keep it in.

Mobile navigation is another matter, as drop-down menus don't work too well on small screens, but however you do it on mobile screens the object of the exercise is still to make it easy for users to find what they are looking for.

[londrum]

...the other thing is, if i keep the mega menu the number of links on each page is about 150-200. if i get rid of those 40 links i can drop it to about 100-150.
people still seem to be saying, even today, that you should try and keep your links per page below 150

[JesterMagic]

I use a mega menu (100+ links) to display a list of our most popular items and categories. It works well on desktop displaying in our left most column on every page. We also have a top bar menu that allows the user to search for items, view a page of all categories, and view a page of the top category with a list of items that includes controls which allows them to filter the list, change category, etc..

Mobile made things difficult but what we did was keep the top bar menu (which became and off canvas menu in mobile) which is always accessible at the top of the screen. We then have our content followed by the left column mega menu at the bottom. This mega menu in mobile is closed and they must tap it to open it to view it. Most mobile users never see this menu an instead use the search or other menu items found in our off canvas menu.

Google has never seemed to mind how we have things currently setup.

[Wilburforce]

if i keep the mega menu the number of links on each page is about 150-200

What are the other links doing? In my own case, there is a link to every page from the mega menu (a bar of six sections across the top, with each expanding on mouseover. and subsections similarly expanding on mouseover), plus a breadcrumb menu. There are not many other internal links on any page, except for occasional context-relevant links to other pages/sections. 100+ internal links as well as a mega menu sounds a lot.

and (edit)...

Google has never seemed to mind how we have things currently setup.

Ditto.

[martinibuster]

...disappears completely on mobile...

Are the 40 links still there in the mobile version? What matters is what links are presented on mobile.

Doesn't seem to be hurting major sites in the health, sports and ecommerce spaces that link to main categories, sometimes like 20 navigational links on a site with millions of pages.

[Pjman]

In my experience, if you are targeting desktop super menus work very well. In many education niches the top sites all have mega menus.

[londrum]

Are the 40 links still there in the mobile version? What matters is what links are presented on mobile.

they're still there in the code, but totally hidden from the user

i suppose the only real benefit of getting rid of the mega menu is that it wont dilute the link juice so much. spreading it between 100 links on every page instead of 150 has got to help a little bit. my homepage had 204 links when i started this, and i've got it down to 98

[NickMNS]

the only real benefit of getting rid of the mega menu is that it wont dilute the link juice so much.

A menu that appears on every page of a website will have no impact on link juice, because math.

[londrum]

maybe if every page on the site had the same weight, but won't taking 50 links off a homepage be better for all the ones left, than taking 50 links off a load of deep pages with no authority, because the homepage has got more juice to share out

[martinibuster]

>>>>they're still there in the code, but totally hidden from the user...

Google is moving all sites to mobile indexing. So if that site has been moved to mobile indexing, and the links aren't visible to the mobile user, then they will not be visible to Google.

That's what I meant when I posted, "What matters is what links are presented on mobile."

Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page's content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user's query. Since the majority of users now access Google Search with a mobile device, Googlebot primarily crawls and indexes pages with the smartphone agent going forward.

[developers.google.com...]

[JesterMagic]

I've kept the mega menu in mobile but it appears after the content (instead of beside in desktop). The menu also must be clicked on to open up (mobile only). It is used a lot in desktop but hardly in mobile. Mobile users tend not to explore our site nearly as much as desktop but then that is I am sure a trend of most article based websites where there is little room for menus.

We are on the mobile first index and I have kept the mega menu on mobile even though most users do not use it because I still find Google still ranks stuff higher if it appears in this menu than not.

[NickMNS]

@londrum

maybe if every page on the site had the same weight, but won't taking 50 links off a homepage be better for all the ones left, than taking 50 links off a load of deep pages with no authority, because the homepage has got more juice to share out

Every internal page has those menu links, so any internal link will recirculate the link juice back to itself. In the end the only links that will make a difference are the links that are not in the menu, thus the menu links have no effect on link-juice.

[FranticFish]

@ Martinibuster (and others)

Has anyone actually tested the theory that although links are in source code (let alone DOM) but hidden with CSS that they are not spidered and not counted in the PR allocation for the page?

if that site has been moved to mobile indexing, and the links aren't visible to the mobile user, then they will not be visible to Google

I'm not that active these days, so if this is common knowledge, forgive my ignorance. Is there a source for this assertion?

[tangor]

Freely admit I am no brainiac regarding "link juice" or "g menu crawls". I run the menus that make sense for the users (and me!) and keep them SIMPLE as in <10 top and <10 sub ... with those dropping out to "index pages" with up to 50 links to OTHER sub pages (if it is a multi zillion page site).

Funny we are chatting mega menus when in past years it was "mega links" from a single index page. :)

"The more things change, the more they remain the same."