Google’s John Mueller discourages websites from linking to every page from the home page, saying it may prevent Googlebot from clearly understanding a site’s architecture.

This topic came up in a recent Google Webmaster Central office-hours hangout where a site owner asked the following question:

“If we try to link to every page on our website from the home page does this dilute the focus?”

In response, Mueller said this practice will dilute the focus in the sense that Google will not be able to understand the structure of the website.

This is especially true for larger websites compared to smaller websites where it’s considered more of a normal practice.

Where larger websites are concerned, linking to every page from the home page will make it difficult for Google to understand the semantic structure.

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In other words, it may not be able to distinguish higher level pages from lower level pages, and it will be more difficult to understand categories.

Google has previously stated that it’s a good practice to link to a site’s most important pages from the home page in order to give them more weight in search results.

However, that does not mean it’s a good idea to link to every page in order for them to all be weighted the same.

When Google has a clear understanding of a site’s architecture, it will be able to position pages in search results in a way that makes sense for searchers.

You can see the full response in the video below, starting at the 30:49 mark.

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