Internal Links

When too many

[Robert123]

I have a large <widget> site. In order to ease user navigation i have about 126 links that appear on every page--in otherwords, a user can jump to any related page from any page.

most people say what is good for the user is good google, but i heard many say that anything over 100 is dangerous

We have 126 and our site has been doing amazing, many are anchor text as well.

any thoughts

[edited by: ciml at 8:48 am (utc) on Mar. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Widgetised. [/edit]

[Stefan]

That limit I believe is wrt external links and it's more of a guideline than a real limit, with the parameters being the number of links that G will use on any given page, and the available shared PR being diluted for any given external link. Because your 126 links are internal, the PR is distributed through the site, and if G doesn't manage to grab all 126 links, just 100, does it make much difference? If it works for you and your users, you should probably stick with it.

[domokun]

although i agrre with stefan, that if it works for your users stick with it, 126 does sound like an awful lot.
im assuming these links must be cleverly catergorised cause if i saw 126 links all jumbled together id go for the exit door.

[TheFounder]

I donno about that. I have a site that pretty much profiles people. This was the directory structure:

Main --- > List ------> Person1
¦ ¦--------> Person2
¦ ¦--------> Person3..
¦-------------------> Person100

The "List" was a php include file

It's was on the main page and the list page and on each person page

I removed the "list file" from the main page because it had almost 100 links directly to the profile. The only thing is that Google only spiders the Main site frequently... the list page only get's hit once every so often.. and I am adding more each day.. so it was the only way to get them in the index..

But I have a sinking feeling that having that many links on the front page is killing my ranking..

[Stefan]

Agreed with the above, 126 is a lot, but he indicates that he's doing well with it, so you hate to advise someone to make a change, and then have it go sour for some reason.

One thing about his setup is that he winds up not being able to direct PR to particular pages, it gets spread evenly through the whole site by the sounds of it. If all those pages still have good PR after that, what the hec, but because the G-bot likes higher ranking pages, (apparently), then it may be better to steer PR towards pages that he wants freshed-up regularly. On the other hand, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.