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""Linking prohibited" aka clueless about the Web"
06/21/2002 Entry
A gem from today's RRE: NPR seems to prohibit linking to anything on their site without prior written authorization. That is so sad. Whoever came up with that has absolutely no idea of how the Web functions. Do they want people to view their site or don't they? The Web is all about linking. You get audiences by other sites sending users your way via links. If you make linking difficult, no site will care to link to you. Linking is like free advertisement for your content. Unless you are hiding something - in which case should you be posting it on the Web in the first place? - why put up hurdles? More importantly, the best search engines like Google use information about linking to figure out the relevance of a site to a search query. So not only do links send users your way directly, but they indirectly contribute to your popularity as well. In fact, this indirect way probably adds up to more potential visitors than the direct links. Someone at NPR needs to read up on search engines and how content is organized and distributed online.
Replies: 2 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
Enough people must've written to NPR for them to begin to get a clue and at least provide a response. Nonetheless, the same permission-to-link policy still applies.
Posted by eszter @ 06/25/2002 11:38 AM CST
Thanks to Chris for pointing me to this article for an update: NPR Retreats, Link Stink Lingers
. Good to know that if enough people raise their voices, some do listen.
Posted by eszter @ 06/28/2002 02:00 PM CST
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