Too many outbound links on a webpage - get penalty?

[crespy]

Hi there,
I'm interested in building a site that people come and pay to listed their sites on it.
Does Google penalize type of this site when it has too many outbound links on a webpage?
Like 40 to 70 links on each one?

 

[Hassan]

Outbound links are not bad, at following cases:
Relevant link which adds more information for your visitors.
Relevant link which links to high quality sites.

But linking to low quality and banned site definitely hurts your ranking.

 

[elcidofaguy]

I've always followed the guidance of keeping it below 100 dofollow outbound links (nofollow not an issue)... and yes this can cause issues - just look at the way G has hammered directories out of existence with some evolving to be used for negative seo!

So I'm surprised that you are even contemplating this with setting up a directory in the first place and further I would be even more surprised if people where prepared to pay for the listing especially if you did not have massive traffic numbers to back up the ROI - which I'm sorry to say is highly unlikely given G's attitude to such sites in the first place...