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Hey Farmer John – In case you didn’t know, Google recommends keeping the number of links on any given page to 100. Not 1000. This is in Google’s Webmaster Guidelines under the Design and Content Guidelines section. It’s a fair guideline; in fact most users would even suggest that 50 is a good enough limit. Although you’ll never find anything close to that amount on any site I own 
Google’s Matt Cutts took the time to explain the rationale in keeping a reasonable number of links on a page. He stated that Google would only index 100kb of a page, and pages with too many links have less a chance of being indexed entirely. However, that doesn’t mean Google won’t index pages higher than 100kb, but the recommendation remains to better the user experience. The thought process is that most website visitors prefer easy and simple navigation. Users don’t like pages with tons of links.
Google may choose not to follow or index those pages with hundreds of links because it’s division of PageRank is ridiculous. What’s going to happen is each link will only pass a very small amount of PageRank. Let’s be realistic – most people hate link-heavy pages, so if you are planning to go overboard putting a ton of them on a page, don’t!
In some cases, it is reasonable to have over a hundred links but still be mindful that such pages can be considered spammy. Web pages with too many links look like link farms or spam pages that will most likely be penalized by Google. Numerous links aren’t automatically considered spam as long as there is sufficient page content to back it up. But if the links are hidden or keyword-stuffed – that’s a whole other story!
Having a well-structured site usually means that content vastly outweighs links/coding. This is what’s considered a ‘well-defined’ site hierarchy. Such is the case of basic e-commerce sites where the site possesses three levels of connecting structures such as the home page, category page, and product page. This order produces an effective structure that follows the ‘two-click’ mantra that is that you want most of your content to be accessible to users within two clicks. Google created the PageRank concept to represent the “importance” of a particular webpage and they base it upon the importance of the pages that link to it. Now, when the site were able to reach that certain limit, each addition character only has a minimum of importance. With those times that Google prioritize the search engine scene, a high PageRank was somewhat of a “magic bullet” to high search engine rankings. Despite the fact that the benefits are no longer so great, it is still quite important to have a reasonable PageRank on your site.
It’s better to understand that links should be used where they make sense. Consider how your users will react and value their simple needs. Adding links just for the sake of linking screams “low-quality” and you will find fewer return visitors to your site.
