It seems the more major bloggers tend to ask for the same rights, privileges and respect given traditional journalists, the more frequently I'm seeing some of them violate best practices for information sharing and news gathering. One major issue I see is that some of the most popular blogs, including Engadget and Mashable, prefer to lead readers deep into their archives rather than linking out to the true sources of the story.What do I mean by this exactly?
In real-world journalism, a reporter impartially offers up the news, as well as balanced commentary from individuals involved, whether they be the subject of a story, witness, or interested party. All efforts are taken to introduce the reader to the source of the information. On the Web, a story on Apple's iPod would link to the Apple Web site or directly to the iPod page. But if you look at Engadget, a hyperlink you would expect to take you to Apple would instead either take you to a previous story about Apple, or to search results within Engadget on the term Apple.
And now it seems Mashable, one leading Web log which follows the hot tech news of the day, is taking the same approach, much to the detriment of readers - many of whom likely find themselves clicking first, and asking questions later.
For example, from tonight's story: "Obama On LinkedIn"
The reporter writes:
"Sen. Barack Obama now has a LinkedIn account. We all knew that Obama is making the most of Internet culture, launching his own social network, gaining a larger-than-life presence on MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter. He’s at the top of his game, according to a recent Nielsen study. The only surprise about Obama’s LinkedIn account is how seemingly late it is."
Being a typical reader, I would expect the three links in this paragraph, to LinkedIn, Twitter and Nielsen, to take me to those services' respective sites, as my links do. But they don't. Instead, the links go to related prior stories from Mashable, in an effort to keep the reader locked into the site as long as possible, either to increase ad revenue, or to possibly make the reader think the site more valuable due its deep archives and previous history.
In June of this year, Yuvi Panda analyzed Engadget and found that more than 40% of all links from Engadget were back to itself, "about 25 times the number of links of it’s closest competitor (which incidentally happens to be EngadgetMobile, an offshoot of Engadget)." Engadget, an unquestioned leader in gadget and tech news, should feel confident enough to send readers off site and expect them to come back.
When I link internally, I introduce the link as a previous post, and when I link to Engadget, you'll know the link goes to Engadget, not a previous story I wrote on Engadget. I believe the practice of hotlinking keywords instead to internal stories is sneaky and doesn't serve readers who are looking for the true sources of information. I hope we see the practice's growth stop cold.
Update: Robert Scoble calls the practice "double linking", while Joe of SurfLizard proposes a new term for this practice: "masterblinking".
TechCrunch is getting to be one of the biggest culprits too. Just have a look at any of their recent posts, most of the links to company names link back to their own 'CrunchBase' service or to other posts. Gizmodo and Valleywag also do it too much, and I've stopped reading them as a result.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most annoying things I've run across. Totally agree with you, link to where the visitor would naturally think the link goes.
ReplyDeleteIf you hover your mouse over a link, you can see (in the bottom left part of the page) where the link points to. Use that information to choose whether you'd like more information from the post publisher. If you'd rather go to the Apple website from every post about the iPhone hack, it is your choice.
ReplyDeleteOf course, needless back-linking should be avoided as it distracts the reader.
Even TC is doing it now. I can see that they link the company names to their online catalog.
ReplyDeleteMy take on this "phenomenon" is the real culprits are the search engines (and all of the SEO's out there promoting this "deep, internal linking"). I don't fully understand the finer details associated with terms like "Google Juice" and just exactly how "doFollow" and "noFollow" affect ones rankings on search engine results pages (SERP's), but the clarity I've taken from my readings is that the more one can internally direct the flow of related links the better ones blog will fare as a result.
ReplyDeleteI do have to agree with badsra, though, it's pretty easy to simply roll over the link and check where the link goes. That's been an action I've taken for a long time, and I don't think there's been a negative effect as yet!
totally agree here, is kinda annoying, but as badsra says, we can check the link by hovering at it
ReplyDeletebut still, james d kirk have a point too, recently i've been doing the same, because of some SEO or something like that, that suggests deep-linking within your blog itself :|
my opinion is that for deep-linking they should choose the keyword wisely, like you said just so it's not misleading, since if you're a loyal reader, of course you always follows their posts, so no need to link back again so aggresive.
The other reason I can see why blogs would want to link to themselves instead of to twitter.com or LinkedIn.com is that it's very easy to find those link - in firefox you just type that to the address field. I admit it's more useful to have a direct link to Obama's LinkedIn profile than a link to last year's story from Mashable about LinkedIn but it's useless to have a link pointing to the LinkedIn entry page, too.
ReplyDeleteBadsra, James, Efendi... of course I can see the URL location before clicking. But the point is that I shouldn't have to. Isn't this practice similar to phishing scams who make me think I'm clicking on eBay or PayPal when I'm really not?
ReplyDeleteWhether or not you can see the endpoint of a link by hovering over it is moot as the vast majority of readers will not do this but click on the link.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Louis that this is a sneaky method being used by a growing number of main tech blogs as a way to further increase advertising page views.
Personally I would go further and say that it is borderline dishonest and IMO blogs that are doing this should be boycotted until they behave more responsibly to their readers than their pocketbooks.
There is a very easy solution to the problems you point out: Simply quit reading and linking to the offending blog and websites and very soon they will learn to behave.
ReplyDeleteI was considering linking to TechCrunch in my next post but I think I'll link Scoble instead.
Internal linking is definitely not what most users want, and therefore is BAD.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I prefer internal linking over the practice most profesional journalists have on main stream media: not linking at all!
Couldn't agree with you more. I absolutely hate it when bloggers do that.
ReplyDeleteThe TechCrunch deep linking isn't too bad because it takes you to a page that actually has valuable info about the company with a clear direct link from there. The worst are Valleywag and Mashable (or Spamable). Good luck trying to get off of those sites!
ReplyDeleteInterestingly I'm seeing this spill over into 'old media' as well. One local news stations I watch almost prevents an interview subject from giving out their web address. They encourage viewers to go to the news stations web site instead. I've also seen them let the subject give the address but put the new station URL on the screen.
ReplyDeleteinternal linking has a role in blogging (I think). It's where you want to refer to ideas you've expressed in more detail in a previous post without going over the whole lot again.
ReplyDeleteBut I take the point about linking to the thing you are referencing, rather than a piece you wrote about the thing you are referencing.
Thanks for dropping by at fasterfuture by the way louis. You're always welcome. dc
Not sure if my trackback will get through, but here's the response I wrote to your piece, Louis.
ReplyDeleteOver at TechCrunch, we often link to CrunchBase pages rather than company websites because we think that our company profiles often give readers better corporate overviews than they would get by going straight to company websites.
ReplyDeleteWe are not trying to trick users into going places they don't expect to go just to barrage them with more ads.
We do realize that many readers find this linking behavior undesirable, so we are actively looking into ways we can refer to both corporate websites and CrunchBase pages from the main blog.
Please email me if you have any particularly good ideas as to how we ought to do this.
I looked a bit into this practise when writing a similar post about a week ago. To me it seems as most popular 2.0 bloggers have adopted this technique to some degree. Though as others I'd say Engadget, TechCrunch and Valleywag are among the most extreme with this internal in-article linking.
ReplyDeleteEngadget may be better at it, but the price for most annoying definitively goes to Valleywag, simply because they're using hidden links together with and in addition to the normal internal in-article linking...
Mark, thanks for stopping by and adding your comments on TechCrunch. Though I didn't mention TechCrunch in my note, it looks like quite a few readers thought of the site when it came to internal linking. I'm glad you and others, like Ryan of Engadget, have opted to be open and discuss the issue. Clearly, there are a number of opinions around this practice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with David Cushman. Speaking from an author's perspective - instead of a reader's or publisher's - citing prior stories is part of telling today's story. Unlike print stories that try to embed all context into single body of text, web stories can include more context by reference. Including prior stories by reference tightens up today's writing and gives an author's view to the chronology.
ReplyDeleteThere's a touch of ego too: you want credit for being early, for covering this beat, and for people to read relevant items you're proud of writing before.
Misleading links are always bad form, though. We'll have to do better.
You're right but I call it with its name: BUSINESS. If you write a blog to make business, you try to increase your pageviews as much as possible. With the amount of visitors those portals have, internal linking can really make the difference. I don't see anything strange here... If you don't want to click, you don't, and jumping to Linkedin or Twitter (referring to your example) is not that difficult even if you don't have them linked there.
ReplyDeleteHola,
ReplyDeleteLooks like I'm late to this conversation.
Yeah, internal links are a tricky one. They're useful if you link to reference material, which is why we started doing it in the first place. In the case you cite, however, they're a pain in the ass: that LinkedIn one is a classic example of where they should definitely *not* be used. We have a verbal policy that the first link should go to the site in question, so that one is human error.
I can guarantee that we'll try to avoid the LinkedIn type screnarios. As for linking to reference material...possibly we'll find a way to offer the user a choice. I'll look into that.
Wow - I guess that's "Everybody". Engadget, Mashable, TechCrunch all made comments here, and Gawker checked in elsewhere. Thanks for stopping by and giving us insight.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with you, internally linking is annoying.
ReplyDeleteAt Gartner, I never referred to a Forrester report. The NY times rarely if every acknowldeges the Washington Post or WSJ. Ergo, any "link" in that world is 99.9% to itself...Most bloggers do much much better than that...no need to feel too guilty.
ReplyDeletePeople click through because they want to learn more or are curious - if that need is met not sure why it matters if the source is the same blogger...
Internal linking isn't all bad. If you're a lesser-known blogger, especially, linking inward keeps visitors abreast of your views on various topics and gives them a taste of your older content. I've posted about it before, but I think it's worthwhile to reiterate that linking inward can be a good thing if you're sensible about it.
ReplyDeleteit depends on how much credit you give your readers. if you know your audience is the type who has already been to apple.com 8 million times during a Jobsnote, you're not going to waste their time giving them that link. they may, however, be very interested to know what other news your site has covered recently related to Apple, particularly because you publish so many stories a day that even a diligent reader may have missed the latest -- so you link them to your Apple tag which always contains the latest independently analyzed Apple news, as opposed to sending them over to some biased corporate press release collection.
ReplyDeletei.e. if you know your readers are smart enough to figure out how to go to Apple's site on their own, don't waste their time -- give them a link to a richer dataset instead.
One Third of All Links from TechCrunch are back to itself. In the last 5 months, about half of Links from them are back to themselves!
ReplyDeleteMore here: http://blog.yuvisense.net/2007/10/11/statbot-techcrunch-data-analysis/
Good article! I totally agree with you!
ReplyDelete