Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What are the implications ?
Regards
Malcolm
if its near the top you may stand a chance but I would have thought the quality of the link would be the issue, if its lower down the page it will probably just get ignored
Just for the record, we can process more than 100 links per page :-). We do however recommend the limit of 100 because it generally makes sense for users (and search engines).
It has been written in their guidelines and has become a reference point for topics such as this. Yes, I know, there are plenty of sites doing just fine with 500+ links on their pages. They most likely have the authority and PR to get away with it. A smaller site with a large number of on page links may have some challenges trying to distribute its minimal PR.
What type of links are we referring to? On site and off site? Or both?
That said, the page has grown and can be split, and that is for the convenience of visitors (just makes sense). Just haven't gotten around to that. When I do, which will be soon, I'll let you know. No problems with indexing (that I can see) but the FREQUENCY of updates has gone south.
I agree in spirit. What puzzles me is a hard and fast rule, like driving on one side of the road as opposed to the other, etc. Is there a "100" rule out there we should be watching? You started this so I suspect you either have an idea or insight...
Inquiring minds want to know.
Is there a "100" rule out there we should be watching?
Only the one that I've seen in Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Other than that, it is open for interpretation or misinterpretation. ;)
I believe it is all relative. Larger sites tend to have a larger number of links per page. I don't know what the calculations may be but common sense tells me that if I have a 10 page site and have hundreds of links all over the place, things are going to be out of whack.
We've had discussions here on internal navigation systems and how "overloading" them with links can be a detriment to indexing in some instances. If you have a site and it doesn't have the link equity to pass amongst that many links, things are going to be challenging. Your best option may be to serve section specific menus with a link to all primary sections always visible. Once the visitor arrives in that section then the menu is specific to that.
I've found more challenges with the "link overloading" issue on websites. I mean, people tend to put entire sitemaps in their navigation. I don't think this is a best practice. I'm more for specifics. Give the visitor the top levels at all times and then let then drill down once inside one of those levels. Not from every page of the site. ;)
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.
Do we have a hard and fast rule? Is it guess? Even in Giggle's WM guidelines there's no specification certain.
I love the internet... keeps the blood pounding! :)
A great deal of this has to do with the momentum successful sites have in the marketplace, media channels utilized, etc, etc. More obscure sites require all the advantages they can obtain. Therefore best practices would suggest the < 100 range.
I have PR7 pages today that rank in the top 10 for dozens of very competitive keywords and these pages have 150+ outbound links on them. Of course, we are in the midst of an entire site redesign and the new site which is in Beta now has approximately 65-80 outgoing links on every page. This includes all global navigation, breakcrumbs, all footer links, and various links from the content or body of the page.
IMO the reason to have less than 100 links is twofold:
1) More than 100 and the page is just spammy looking and it becomes hard to find a particular link you are looking for.
2) If you are splitting a page's link juice (LJ) across, say 500 outbound links, each of those links is being passed approximately 0.002 x LJ where as if you have say 50 outbound links, then each of those outbound links is being passed approximately 0.02 x LJ (or 10 times more link juice than when you have 500 outbound links).
[edited by: ZydoSEO at 5:01 am (utc) on Nov. 21, 2008]
I have PR7 pages today that rank in the top 10 for dozens of very competitive keywords and these pages have 150+ outbound links on them.
If we look at the common denominator amongst those sites that exceed the suggested 100 per page limit, I'd be willing to bet that they "all" have sufficient PR to support the number of outbounds. Cause and effect. A PR7 page these days is much more powerful than it was let's say a year ago. In fact, PR has dropped across the board overall in many industries. I was hoping that is a sign that PR is a metric on its way out of the equation, at least from a visual standpoint. It will still be used internally but we won't get to see it. I can only hope... ;)
From what I'v read online, they do seem to apply some sort of penalization factor...
Don't rely on what you read. Decisions based on personal experience are more valuable. pageoneresults has a good angle on it. If it were true there was a penalization or dampening factor you might see many top sites ranking lower than they do.
If your site is a trusted site with good content , pr , and linking then having more than 100 links might not effect you to badly .
Another thing that could effect you is the number of pages you .for instance if you have 10 000 pages with 100 pages > 100 links it could be considered normal , yet if you have 100 pages with 90 pages > 100 links you could be considered spammy (page ranks ect being equal)
so you could look at a quantitive side ... i.e 1% of site is < 100 links or 90% of site has 100 links .
Again sure there is a best practice but look at validation , best practices say your site should validate, yet 5% of the web validates.
I don't think so. There's some history and background to the 100 link thing.
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