Long Lists

How long is too long?

[dcheney]

Howdy,
My site has a number of different alphabetic lists of proper names of things. Are there any good rules of thumb for how long a list is too long?
Here are my current rules:
smallish
<100 just list
100+ insert graphic of letter at each break, link to each at top
biggish
each letter has its own page

As my site continues to expand, the "biggish" lists are likely to become too big even after being split by first letter.
So, any ideas on how long a list is too long? (or should I just go by page size - i.e. over 50k must be split further?)

Thanks,
David

[papabaer]

Hi Dave, I think you have almost answered your own quetion. Certainly file size will be a factor, as will the ability of visitors to "digest" long lists. Breaking them up into more manageable segments adds to useability.

I am sure there are some studies on this, but you can get a pretty good feeling yourself just by viewing your lists objectively. Experiment with creating "sections." Get a feel for it and always err on the side of useablility.

I'm sure there will be others along shortly to relate their experiences. Consensus is good! ;)

[brotherhood of LAN]

Running a dictionary, I needed a place to dump some URL's so spiders could sniff around the database containing the info in the dictionary :)

basically, from that page, there was a link to A B C etc, each page with about 200 URL's to each term. A 4 columned table with 50 URL's in each. 8 Pages like this.

I can say that they dont rank high generically, but for niche terms, a few pop their head out the sand and get some hits solely on the hyperlink being there on that page. I don't seem to get penalised for the page, and I'm not grumbling that its not ranked superbly either. But for me, it does a good job halfway.

No doubt every list would be a different story :)