Can I reduce link count by no following links?

[moesian]

Hi,

A large number of my pages contain over 100 links. This is due to a large drop down navigation which is on every page. To reduce my link count could I just no follow these navigation links or would I have to remove the navigation completely?

[rasmusbang]

I do not Think that it would reduce the number of links. However it would improve the link juice passed by the links that ARE followed. It is my impression that Google does not punish you for a large menu (if it is not extreme). Can you give a link where i can see the menu? What you really need to do is decide if the dropdown is necessary? If the links are truly usable for your users they are likely to be good for Google. Try and use google analytics to see if users actually use the navigation?

[ChristopherGlaeser]

It is my understanding, bases on other responses to this forum, that using nofollow does not improve the link juice passed to the follow links, but that the link juice that would have been passed to the nofollow link is lost.

Best,
Christopher

[mjtaylor]

Christopher is correct; the link juice is divided between all the links on the page whether the links have the nofollow attribute is lost. So, the suggestion that you can tell Google where to send the link juice (called PageRank sculpting) is erroneous.

You can block those pages from being crawled and indexed via your robots text, but again, it will not mean more link juice is passed to the crawled pages.

The concept of "too many links" was fostered by A Google Webmaster Guideline of some years ago that advised against more than 100 links on a page. Google warned that not all links were likely to be crawled if there were so many.

Google now says that is no longer an issue. However, that many links on a page can present an issue with usability for your site visitors and that should be your guiding light on the number  of links per page.

[Sebes]

To my current knowledge Google treats internal nofollow links as followed for linkjuice purposes. Beeing a bit over 100 links is not too much of a problem. You might want to consider to consolidate a few pages into one. Another solution could be to noindex really unimportant pages (legal/disclaimer etc.)

I have a question myself: does Google crawl pages that are internally nofollowed?

[DougRoberts]

How is the large drop-down menu working for your site's visitors? Is there scope to improve the navigation and reduce the number of links?

If the navigation is important then you can't just remove it completely can you? I would take a look at how the site is being used and how well the navigation is helping visitors find what they're looking for. What's the reason this navigation exists? Can you use the current page to provide context and reduce the number of relevant links?

Once you know how important it is you'll be in a much better position to decide whether to remove it (or improve it) or not.