Should I put a No follow on each link in a Javascript dropdown menu?

[JeanYates]

I have a javascript dropdown menu on every page of my site. It lists all the wineries I write about and sell. About 300 links.  I've been told that google doesn't like so many links on a page, but that it doesn't spider javascrpt. Then I hear that it does.

Am I being penalized by all the links? Or does the spider really not see them?

I don't want to give up my javascript menus, unless I have to. Should I put a no follow on each link inside the code?

And on the other hand, am I losing google juice by not letting it see all the pages on my site that I link to in the javascript menu?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[SteveOllington]

You should definitely just give up the Javascript menu, if the reason you don't want to is due to design, etc... then look into CSS as an alternative, you'll find you can probably replicate the current Javascript nav to appear exactly the same with CSS instead.

With regards to the nofollows, it depends... do you want those pages to get indexed and gain any position in the SERP's? For long-tail terms perhaps? If so then you don't want to nofollow them.

Can you not break them down somehow into better categories, because what you have heard is correct... that is too many links on a page.

Look at "siloing" I only recently came across siloing myself and asked about it on here, where I was referred to this article  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo

[JeanYates]

Thanks so much you are very helpful.

I've had the same pull down menus on my site since 1998! I guess it's time to try something new.

[SteveOllington]

Hehe, I think you might be right

Try "Smashing Magazine" for CSS menus, or there's "CSSplay.co.uk" but they charge

[JeanYates]

I sell wine from Oregon, so I'm thinking of dividing the wineries up into regions/AVAs, one AVA on each page.

I'm afraid people might have a hard time finding the winery they are looking for, so maybe I should supplement the regional pages with a "search" page listing all the wineries with links, maybe putting a no follow on that page, figuring that I don't care if that page is spidered.

Good ideas or not so good?

I know how to do a css menu that looks the same as my javascript pulldown, but aren't I going to run into the same problem with too many links on the page?

[SteveOllington]

Yeah you can do that with the search listings page, but make sure that's not the only links in to the content that you do want spidered. Alternatively if you do go with the CSS menu then you'd need to reduce the number of links by linking to the categories first, then from the categories to the pages. It's not ideal as the architecture wouldn't be as flat but it would still be better then having too many links I think.

Have a look at www.martinco.com as one example of how you could do the stuff with the search listings. The search listings page returns results as queries and that page is noindex, nofollow... but at the bottom of the page there are also links to different regions which then go on to link to the offices within those regions. That was done as a solution for the same problems you're having... plus of course you will need to make sure you get lots of in-content text links from relevant pages to the pages you want indexed where you can.

[JeanYates]

Thank you very much. You've been very generous with your knowledge. It is most appreciated. Now it's time to get on to the coding!

Jean

[SteveOllington]

No worries... you can give me a thumbs up and a "this answered my question" if you like... I want that SEOmoz t-shirt lol.