2 replies to this topic

[seotiger]

There is a lot of assumption out on the internet about how many links on a page is too much for Google. Some say 200 and some day less than 100 and the theories go on and on. I am wondering if anyone has encountered issues or heard of others having issues with too many links. I have a few pages that have 430+ links on them and the 429th link gets indexed by Google. This is from the top of the page down. So I am starting to feel that the number of links theory is a bit of folklore.

Anybody have any thoughts on this topic?

[torka]

At least at one time, Google recommended a maximum of 100 links per page. Not sure if they still explicitly mention a number anywhere, but people have tested and found that Google will often index more than 100 links, so that number apparently doesn't represent any sort of technical limitation on their part nowadays.

I'm not sure if anyone's figured out the real maximum number of links they'll index per page. My suspicion is it might vary depending on other factors: what other content there is on the link-laden page, how "important" they judge the link-laden page to be, possibly even what they think about the other pages the links point to. I don't know that there's any way to know for sure, though.

To my mind, any "limits" on links per page is a usability and conversions issue more than an SE issue. If it's a "regular" page on the website, too many links presented all at once will confuse visitors. And confused visitors don't buy -- they leave to find somewhere else that's less confusing. That behavior has been well-documented in usability studies.

If it's a directory or sitemap-type page, you can often get away with more links, but again, beyond a certain point you're simply making it harder for visitors to find what they're looking for. At that point, it might be helpful to refine the classification of the links so they can be broken down into smaller "chunks" to make it easier for visitors to grasp.

At least to an extent, the maximum number you can include without sacrificing usability or conversions will vary depending on presentation. If the links are included in drop-down menus, for instance, you can often get away with more of them because only the top level of links displays initially. Customers aren't overwhelmed when they first encounter the page, and -- assuming the menus are thoughtfully arranged -- can use the menu system to drill down to the specific page they're looking for.

But a page with hundreds of links, all staring a visitor in the face right from the get-go? That's a usability nightmare.

My

--Torka

[seotiger]

Yeah I agree with the "too many links being confusing" the point of the pages is to help google spider the final landing page. That is ultimately the page that we want google to index and show when someone does the search. With millions of products in our database, this is the only effective way to get our products indexed. We of course use Google sitemaps as well, but my experience so far is that google does spider more than 100 links and I strongly feel that page size is the biggest thing to consider. I think Google stops grabbing page data past a certain kilobyte threshold. Any links beyond that are left behind. With this rule in mind I try to keep the pages down to around 70K as a worst case scenario.