Q: I am almost done with a blog post but before publishing it, want to know if I can pass around 200 links. Google recommends keeping link number less than 100. Please tell if the post will be considered spammy with so many links, will it affect the ranking and why has Google provided the link numbers recommendation?
A: Initially Google use to index only about 100 kilobytes of a page, on the basis of which it recommended the number of links not to exceed 100. If a page had more links than the recommended number, there were chances of the page being so long that Google would truncate it and not index the entire page.
However, recently Google has started indexing more than 100 kilobytes of a page but I will still recommend keeping it to the links below 100 because of the user experience. Showing 200 links means giving a bad experience to the users. It may look fine to you but from the perspective of a new visitor or even your regular readers, it’s can be an overwhelming experience.
Coming to the spam part – No, Google will not consider a page spam, if it has more than 100 links. The recommendation of 100 links is in the Design and Content guidelines section. It is the Quality guidelines that have information about things such as hidden text, doorway pages etc, which is considered as a webspam.
Pages with over 100 links can be spammy, especially if the links are hidden or stuffed with keywords. However, I would again emphasize the fact that pages with lots of links are not automatically considered spam by Google.
How will Google treat your blog post with about 200 links?
If you add more than hundred links to the page, there are chances that Google will not follow or index all the links. Moreover, you are dividing the PageRank of the page between hundreds of links, so every link will pass only a minuscule amount of PageRank or link juice as we call it now.
At last, keep in mind that site visitors are usually not fond of link-heavy pages. So, before going overboard by putting lots of links, do ask yourself the purpose of the page and whether it will deliver a good user experience to the readers.
