My understanding is that a link from a page with 100 links is worth 1/10th the value of a link from a page with only 10 links.   Link "juice" is diluted.  Some tools seem to indicate that the total number of links going to other domains is important.  I didn't think that was important.  My understanding is that it is the total number of links as more links will dilute the power of the link.

I want to be very clear.   I am talking about two types of outgoing links from a page.  Links to other pages on the same website and links to pages on other websites.

I thought that the important factor in the value of a link was how many outing links a page has total.  Some tools seems to tell me that the important data point is how many EXTERNAL links a page has.   Which number should I be paying attention to when looking at pages I want to get linked from?

(Yes, I know there are many other factors that are important)

Just some more info:

we used "opencube" to make our menus.   Fantastic software.

Just adding a few things to this posters questions.

I was always told that Java drop down menus were bad.  I made sure my menus were html that could be seen in the code.   I read recently that Google is getting better at reading java menus.  I am not sure I believe this.

I have menus that open up into a tree structure; refining the search as you go.  I find this to be good for the user experience as fewer clicks are required to get where you want to go.  I am unsure of the seo downside to my menu structure as it means each of my pages have 170 links.