The web is built on links, but not all links are equally useful. nthlink is a pragmatic concept for treating links as ordered, contextual relationships: rather than exposing every possible connection, systems can compute and surface the n-th most relevant links between entities — where n is chosen for clarity, performance, or UX reasons. This idea spans graph theory, web architecture, and interface design and helps teams balance comprehensiveness with cognitive load. At heart, nthlink treats a site or dataset as a graph: nodes represent pages, products, users, or concepts; edges represent relationships or interactions. An nthlink is a link that represents the k-th degree of separation or the k-th ranked relationship relative to a given context. For example, a product page might show 1st-degree links to complementary accessories, 2nd-degree links to user-generated guides, and 3rd-degree links to community discussions. The pattern helps define which links to present, when, and why. Implementation approaches vary by use case: - Graph traversal: Use breadth-first or best-first search on a relationship graph to collect nodes by degree. Apply ranking heuristics (popularity, recency, similarity) to pick the top-n per degree. - Server-side aggregation: Compute nthlink candidates as part of page rendering or via background jobs, caching results for speed. - Client-side selection: Fetch a broader set of relationships and use client logic to display only the relevant n links based on screen size or user actions. - Declarative selectors: Extend design systems with components like