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Google's webmaster guidelines states,"Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)." So I assume I am okay?
Thanks in advance for explaining this to me. I would hate to have to take down this list.
Christina
Is it important to you that your list is indexed by SE's? If not then you could choose to prevent SE's from indexing the page by adding the folowing in the <head> section of the document:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
<meta name="msnbot" content="noindex">
or maybe even:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex,nofollow">
<meta name="msnbot" content="noindex,nofollow">
(the above will both disallow SE's from index and follow links in that page)
By doing this your users will still be able to use the list as before but SE's won't index it nor show it in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
Christina
Please not that no method is will guarantee the results you want. Well behaved bots will comply.
Christina
Linking to other sites is *good.* They call it the "Web" for a reason.
Links to other relevant sites from your site is helpful to your users, helps the SE's understand what sites are highly regarded around the Web, and may even enhance the perceived quality of your site in the eyes of the SE's.
The potential negatives are:
1) If the links are not really relevant,
2) If the links link out to "bad sites"
3) If the links are to other sites owned or controlled by you,
4) If the links are all or mainly reciprocated.
The issue of how many links to include on a page relates mainly to questions people have had over the years about length of page and number of links. Generally it's better to keep pages under 100K in size, and with less than 100 links. But I can tell you with certainty that pages with 200+ links get spidered and those links get followed.
Do what makes sense for your users mainly, and keep within general guidelines. Do not exclude legitmate resource pages from the SE's.
It would be nice if a Google Rep could give an opinion on this as I believe this is an important point that needs to be answered by Google , because as more and more sites do this the internet as we know it will die.
With the growth in social networking sites making links no follow and webmasters paranoia over keeping the juice they have and doing the same where will it lead to
steve
It would be nice if a Google Rep could give an opinion on this
There's a heck of a lot of FUD out and about lately. Let's forget about "penalties" and the little green pixels, turn off the toolbar [webmasterworld.com], and just get to work building good sites.
Another side of the link issue is that you need to review your outbound links from time to time. Some links go bad for a whole variety of reasons, and you need to be ready to delete them if that happens.
As for the point of this thread, there has never been any debate about linking to other quality sites being a good thing. Reps from all of the major SE's have repeatedly stressed that sites should freely link out to other sites that they feel offer additional valuable resources to their user base.
That is the essence of why link evaluation exists, and why getting high quality links from other site is so important. Would you like it if some Webmaster chose not to link to your site, or to cloak their link, for fear of what a SE might do?
If you're doing it for the sake of the user, link away, and do so confidently, knowing that even the SE's encourage you to do so.
And the minimal drain on PR is worth it. Google recognizes that searchers come to my site and don't bounce! That's a good thing in Google's eyes.
how does the SE knows that the other sites owned or controlled by me?
who is? or dns?
is there any other way to track that?
However, interlinking related sites is not necessarily negative. It is a question of whether it's natural and useful for humans and not just done to manipulate SEs.
IMO, MJ
