Removing Links...

[EJS]

On one of my sites, I have a page about a museum, and at the bottom of the page, I link to several internal news articles that Ive written over the past year. The bottom of the page has become quite large, so I want to cull the number of links. Since all of the articles are already indexed in Google, am I okay to remove the links from the main article page, or will Google penalize the page? As far as I know, as long as Google can still find the page based on the link that's indexed, I should be okay, but I just want to confirm before I begin culling.

Thanks!

[south]

You intend to keep the pages, and just remove the links? *I* would generate a sitemap before removing the links (so the sitemap generator will crwal them rather than you having to manually add them in the sitemap), then let google find them through the sitemap. That's what the sitemap is all about. Then you could remove the links.

edit: also make sure you submit the sitemap to them through googles publisher tools.

[EJS]

You intend to keep the pages, and just remove the links? *I* would generate a sitemap before removing the links (so the sitemap generator will crwal them rather than you having to manually add them in the sitemap), then let google find them through the sitemap. That's what the sitemap is all about. Then you could remove the links.

edit: also make sure you submit the sitemap to them through googles publisher tools.

Thanks for the info... I already have the sitemap. I was just afraid that by removing the links, Google would remove the content or think it was less valuable and rank it lower.

[Seraphim]

In my experience, as long as the Google bot can still crawl the page(s) after the link(s) are removed, you should be ok (good to link every page to an XML site map to prevent islands of content from forming). I'm not a fan of tailoring a website towards Page Rank values, but if you're currently linking to a page or group of pages from a high PR value, removing the link(s) could cause those pages to drop in ranking a bit. You might want to look in to that before removing anything.

Yahoo on the otherhand seems to give more ranking strength based on internal anchor text and location, so I'm not sure what will happen in that engine, Yahoo can be really unpredictable (though my Y traffic is only 16% total).

[cursal]

Just to give the flip side of this.

I had 3 names in a 20 name geo-network that were developed mini-sites. Then I pulled the content and put a single "for lease" page on all 20 names.
The for lease pages are 98% graphical in nature, contain 1 an adsense unit and the links to the other 20 names. All 20 names show the same for lease page.
And the kicker....they all gained PR.

The 3 that I removed content from went from 0 to 3 and all the rest from 0 to 2.

They all have the same page content except for page title, meta tags and the H1 tag.
Besides the links, the H1 is the only content on the page.

I was totally and still am completely baffled. They are all still holding rank after 3 months of no content.
So who knows what the hell google gives rank for. It sure isn't the content. Not for these sites anyhow.
Oh, for the bonus they are showing higher in G results. All in the top 10-30 for the geo + keyword.

[Seraphim]

So who knows what the hell google gives rank for. It sure isn't the content. Not for these sites anyhow.
Oh, for the bonus they are showing higher in G results. All in the top 10-30 for the geo + keyword.

Indeed, their ranking algorithm looks a bit like a Salvador Dalí painting at the moment, which is unfortunate. Yahoo and MSN though unpredictable with ranking factors, actually seem to offer much more long term ranking stability (which all online businesses long for). Google has some great tools, but they really fall short with search in my opinion. I think everyone is pretty hungry for some search competition at this point.