Google's 100 links per page reference

**Kyle** · 07-14-2004, 02:20 PM

Google mentions on their recommendations to webmasters to keep fewer than 100 links per page. I was wondering what people's thoughts were on this. My site Survive Outdoors already has more than 100 links in the navigation, and I would like to be closer to 200 by the end of the year.

I have seen many major sites with hundreds of links on each page. I figured that this may be more of a guideline to follow, and that there are exceptions.

What does everyone think? Is this dated? Does this more apply to sites in the 'gray' area of spam vs. quality?

**chrispian** · 07-14-2004, 02:24 PM

Kyle, I'm in the same boat as you. It's more of a guide though and I think your site is fine. I can't find a better way to show all the new stuff on my site. We add 40-50 new pages a day at lit.org.

**Kyle** · 07-14-2004, 02:32 PM

Chrispian - I started counting all the <a tags on your site, I got to about 170 and then stopped hehehe. How long has your site been up?

**r2d2** · 07-14-2004, 03:06 PM

Chris said it was just a guide for new webmasters, there are quite a few pages around with more links, eg sitepoint, loads of news homepages etc.

Do you really need all those links on every page though?

**Chris** · 07-14-2004, 03:33 PM

Its simply a guideline for newbies, and it isn't a spam guideline it is a ranking well guideline. Someone with no understanding of PR might overly dilute what little PR they have resulting in no well ranked pages. By keeping links on each page down they stay away from the fully meshed site structure and thus PR ends up concentrated more at places like the homepage.

**Kyle** · 07-14-2004, 04:13 PM

Wow, you're right Chris. I just went to the guidelines page at Google and saw that this recommendation is for ranking well... it has nothing to do with bans/spams/what not to do.

That specific recommendation is often misrepresented in random SEO articles across the web. When searching on further information on this '100 link' guideline, I found lots of articles who mention the 100 links to imply what not to do so you aren't penalized/banned.

Thanks everyone.

**chrispian** · 07-14-2004, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by icebane

Chrispian - I started counting all the <a tags on your site, I got to about 170 and then stopped hehehe. How long has your site been up?

6.. no 7 years. I relaunched it about 4 years ago after a couple of false starts. The first year after relaunch was slow. The second year was better, but the last two years it's been crazy. It's just blown up and continues to shock me in terms of submissions. I've had to revamp the system a couple of times just to handle it.

**Chris** · 07-14-2004, 06:25 PM

Yup, its very common. Even so called "professionals" or "established" people will tell you that you get in trouble if you go over 100 links per page.

Of course the homepage for most popular forums will have hundreds if not thousands of links. I bet forums like Webhosting talk get up to 1000 links easy. Directories also easily exceed 100. So even if they didn't read up on Google, and even if they didn't listen when Googleguy says its just a guideline, you'd think that through using the Internet they'd realize that many sites go over 100 links with no problem.

**Kyle** · 07-14-2004, 07:03 PM

lol it's great. Even I told so many friends to watch out for going over 100 links, because I learned from reading articles and forums. If all I did was study those guidelines @ Google a little closer.

**kingsimon999** · 08-03-2004, 12:29 PM

I have been targetting 'PS2 cheats' with some of my websites for a while and given up and gone for the second best 'ps2 cheat codes'.
The no1 website for 'PS2 cheats' and 'PS2 cheat codes' contains many links on the homepage about 700 or more i reckon, its just one long page of links to PS2 game cheats. the site is www.psx2codes.com
The guideline does not seem to affect this site at all.

**intelliot** · 08-03-2004, 05:50 PM

i do think it is a problem, not only from an SE point of view, but from a visitor's standpoint as well. your navigation links shouldn't extend so far below the content itself, and with so many links, there's a good chance many will never be clicked...