To link or not to link?: August 16, 1999 issue of New Thinking

August 16, 1999 New Thinking:
To link or not to link?

Website content management

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August 16, 1999

To link or not to link?

By Gerry McGovern

I read an interesting article this week about Jean-Pierre Bazinet and his Movie-List website. Movie-List is a website with links to almost 1000 movie trailers. Sounds like a good resource for the movie fan and something the movie studios should feel positive about as well.

However, in July, Bazinet removed all links from trailers belonging to Universal Pictures as a result of letters and emails from lawyers acting on their behalf.

I’m not exactly sure why Universal reacted so negatively to Bazinet’s links. However, I read that it might have something to do with that fact that he was using ‘deep’ links into the Universal website.

What this means is that a link does not go to the homepage of the website but rather goes to a specific page ‘deep’ within the website. Some websites complain that this sort of linking can bypass sponsor/advertisements, thus taking away from revenue streams.

I have always believed that the more links you can get on the Internet, the better. If you look at Yahoo or Amazon, they have millions of links to their websites. In fact, in years to come the amount of links a website has will be a key indicator of the value of that website and will be accounted for on its balance sheet.

Why is linking so important? A website without any links to it is at Point 0 in Internet time and space. A link is like a road and a website without any roads leading to it is truly isolated. We all talk about the necessity of getting registered/linked in the major search engines. That’s important but it is only the first step in the linking process.

Generally speaking, no link is too small to get because a link is the best possible advertisement in that it is positive word of mouth. Think about it for a moment. Someone who runs another website has decided that they will encourage people who visit their website to also visit yours. It's difficult to buy that sort of promotion.

Does this mean that all linking is good? As with everything, there are always some exceptions. When someone links to you but keeps the user in their website by the use of frames, the power of the link is significantly reduced. When someone creates a whole set of links to your website, linking to elements of your content rather than your brand, that can almost be an act of passing off your information as their own.

A case that might have reflected the above approach was settled between Microsoft and Ticketmaster earlier this year, when Microsoft agreed in an out-of-court settlement not to link deep within the Ticketmaster website. But the general law is vague in such a new area as linking and, even in the United States, there are no comprehensive court opinions as of yet.

The legal ins and outs of linking will in time be sorted. I, for one, fundamentally encourage and support the process of linking. It’s a foundation stone upon which the Internet is built. But as with much else in life, not every link is a good one.

(Because of summer holidays, the next issue of New Thinking will be August 30.)

Gerry McGovern

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In years to come, the amount of links a website has will be a key indicator of the value of that website and will be accounted for on its balance sheet.