: Which order of the links is important? Visible, or in source code? I heard that Google bot places weight on links, according to their order in the page. So the first link is higher in importance,

@Heady270

Placement of links on the page is more important than order in source code. Links that are not prominent are often discounted by Google:


Left hand column below the fold
Right hand column below the fold
Footer links


Links that are positioned where there are likely to be used by users carry the most weight:


Main navigation
Above the fold in the content


This model is the "reasonable surfer" model which is different than the "random surfer" model on which the 1999 Google Pagerank algorithm was based.

It is not clear exactly how much Google relies on the reasonable surfer model. The strongest statements I've seen from Google representatives say only that links in certain places in the page may be discounted.

As W3d says in the comments, it would be unlikely that two links that are right next to each other in the source code would be weighted very differently, even if the order were switched.

I have seen some evidence that Google may ignore links that are further down a large list of links. This would make sense from a usability perspective. For example we know that most users click on the first search result and that fewer and fewer users click on each site with a worse ranking.

Vote Up Vote Down

@BetL925

Order of links is important if you have twice or more the same link because Google will consider in the most cases the first link but not necessarily the others.

However, your two links are different (point to two different URLs), so that means the order doesn't matter for Google and it will consider and evaluate both (if Googlebot wants to follow these two links). Moreover, think about Googlebot sees your links one by one by analyzing your HTML page (order in the HTML page).

Vote Up Vote Down