Google’s 100 Link Limit (Limit? What Limit?)

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Does Google have a 100 link per page limit? No. Not according to Matt Cutts. In fact, Google’s never really had a 100 link per page limit. As Matt says, the reason Google gave for that 100 links per page thing was because of a limitation in Google’s indexing quality. That limitation no longer exists, but even if it did that’s not the point anyway.

Spam. That’s the point. User experience. That’s the second point.

Link farms used to be quite popular and after awhile they quit being effective because too many users would show up on a web page, look at massive amounts of links, and leave. No clicks. No scans. No reads. Just bounces. Google figured out that users didn’t want to see a page full of links.

But what if you have 250 links on a page that is composed of three columns of text where each column is content broken up by heads, subheads, photos, images, and other graphics, laid out with tables and CSS and meets all the standards of W3C, looks attractive, and is functional. In other words, it’s not just a page that consists of link after link after link after link until your eyes go hyperlink blue.

What if a savvy webmaster put together a really useful set of resources on a particular topic and it was broken up into subtopics, each with a separate header and an associated graphic with text wrap around, an introductory summary followed by 10-25 links, and a lead-in into the next subtopic? Getting the picture?

See this example of a page with 109 links before the section titled “Join the Conversation”. Now suppose this page had 20 chapters and twice as many links. Would it be a useful page? Absolutely. And I don’t think Google would have any issue with it. As long as you aren’t using blackhat search engine optimization techniques with hidden text and links, stuffed keywords, and such then you should have a good page of solid content. The number of links is irrelevant.