vsbabu.org

Why don't they allow deep linking?

Many web sites have terms of use that prohibit linking directly into a page other than their home pages. DallasNews.com says "If you operate a Web site and wish to link to this Site, you may link only to the home page of the Site and not to any other page or subdomain of us". Some others don’t prohibit deep linking, but "recommend" against it.

If you are happy that some visitors bookmark a page on your site, you should be happier with deep linking because you are probably going to get more visits out of a deep-link rather than personal bookmarks. Do you want to sue search engines like Google or AltaVista for providing deep links? If you do, you really don’t know why your site is on the internet.

To me it looks like that these web site operators have atleast the following incompetencies.

- The information architecture of the site is either non-existant or is always changing. So, preventing deep linking is their way of doing CYA because they don’t know how to structure their content properly.

- Their marketing division has an unending desire to "guide" people through the home page. Folks, if people like something on your site and if they feel that is going to change, be thankful and let them get to what they are interested right away. Most home pages have things like welcome messages and cool graphics that noone wants to see again and again. How would you like if some one told you that you can’t flip directly to the Sports/Style section on your daily news paper without first reading the front page?

- Their legal team is fairly uptight about making people get the least out of the site.