Oct

20

Internal linking still sleazy

October 20, 2007 |

J. Waggstaff is keeping the pressure on internal linkers. Good job.

I find it personally annoying because I tend to drag links into PersonalBrain or elsewhere and expect a link that says ‘Flock’ to go to Flock. But it’s also dishonest, like putting an EXIT sign over a door in a shop which instead goes into another part of the shop. It’s against the principles of the net, and, frankly, tells me that something is wrong in the state of Web 2.0 if this kind of thing is considered acceptable or even good practice.

I wrote about it about a month ago and I think we are seeing some changes. At least Gawker says it has made some changes (<- yes, that’s an internal link…) to make the internal links more transparent (though it doesn’t make a difference for those of us who mostly read blogs in feeds).

There are good reasons to use internal links (I think the one I used above is a good one), but overall, it is just a sleazy practice meant to do nothing else but keep people on your property. To me, the idea of a link is to send people away and have them come back for more.

The greatest offender, by the way, is TechCrunch. According to Yuvi’s numbers, they link to themselves almost 50% of the time since they started the CrunchBase, even though a regular link to the “real” site would work just fine. BloggersBlog notes that Webware is heading in the same direction.


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5 Comments so far

  1. ThePete on October 20, 2007 3:14 pm

    I thought internal linking helps up your search engine stats. Also, I check the status bar before I click on anything.

  2. Internal Linking Explained on October 20, 2007 5:54 pm

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  3. Internal Linking Explained « ShortNet on October 20, 2007 6:05 pm

    […] Further reading: Internal Linking Still Sleazy The CrunchBase has Taken Over Annoying Internal Linking Trend Sleazy Linkers Lose An Ally Linking: […]

  4. » Internal Links: They’re Bad, Really? Search Engine Optimization Journal on October 21, 2007 1:45 pm

    […] (Source) There are good reasons to use internal links (I think the one I used above is a good one), but overall, it is just a sleazy practice meant to do nothing else but keep people on your property. To me, the idea of a link is to send people away and have them come back for more. […]

  5. Internal linking, ethical or not on October 25, 2007 12:26 pm

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