Deep Linking Again
from the please.--make-it-stop dept
We already pointed out that the deep linking question has returned lately – but I was just hoping it was a European thing, and that folks in the US had realized that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with deep linking. Instead, here’s a story about a newspaper in Dallas that has told another site to stop deep linking to their articles. This is still ridiculous. If they don’t want people linking to them they should get off the web. This guy is sending them more traffic. Even if they don’t like what he’s saying, it’s stupid to tell people they’re infringing on copyright by linking to them. Also, what I really don’t understand about any of these cases is why they don’t just use a technology solution. It’s easy enough to block all links from a certain location if they’re so stupid to want to turn away traffic.
Comments on “Deep Linking Again”
Huh?
If it’s copyright they’re so worried about, why don’t they just put copyright info on each page?? I suspect it’s more related to a perceived loss of banner ad income, which is probably measured by hits to the top page. Have you ever noticed how many ads there are in a paper newspaper? It’s something like 80 – 90%!
No Subject Given
I must admit that I’m confused. Whether a deep link works or not is under the control of the object site (in thi scase the Dallas Morning News). If a http request for a deep linked page arrives they can simply rewrite it to their home page – or what ever. Where’s the problem?
Re: No Subject Given
they are too stupid to do that obviously.
agreeement
The company i work for had the same problem with people enhancing their own web sites by deep-linking. We dealt with it exactly the same way Mike described — we wrote a script that shuts out the offending domain names and saved our legal department a bundle.
Re: agreeement
Ok, so this probably is because I have no idea what your company does, but how exactly is deep linking a problem in the first place? Do you not like the fact that other websites are sending you traffic that you otherwise would never get?
Re: Re: agreeement
perhaps they want ALL USERS of their site to go thru a certain path. They want control of this. The banner ads are an example of this.
also, perhaps they dont have programming staff on hand who can make the changes to their site. perhaps they have cheap lawyers , and they feel this is a more inexpensive route
Re: Re: Re: agreeement
Maybe a good use of the DNS would be to somehow bin things up in such a way that there is an actual World Wide Web in the original spirit under one set of TLDs, and then the World Wide Media Empire under some other set.
Re: Re: Re:2 agreeement
Dallas Morning News online is a joke anyway. I don’t even visit the site as 50% of any clicks on the homepage require you to register for their content. That coupled with pop-under ads!
They are scared that they can’t play with the big news web sites and they are right.
I guess an RSS feed is out of the question? 😉
Re: Re: agreeement
Not all web sites exist to draw traffic; In our case, a web site was linking to a moving sample arhive we have set up for potential clients. We don’t have advertisements on our site, so getting more traffic isn’t the point — getting the right kind of traffic is.