What is a link?

What will a link evolve into?

[Webwork]

Approximate dates of critical mass:

1995 - A discovery revealed

1997 - A friendly pointer, a search aid

1999 - Part of the great directory organization of thw www

1999 - No, it's a vote, a link-popularity vote

2002 - It's a reciprocal gesture, you vote for me and I'll vote for you.

2003 - It's a commodity - I've got some PR - you want some? What do you got? Pay me!

2003-2004 - No, it's an advertisement that sends you PR+traffic and therefore has market value. Want a text-link ad? By the month or the year? ROS?

2004-2005 - Can I please have that .edu or .gov link? Will you lend me your real authority? OBTW, what exactly is authority? No, I don't want no damned reciprocal link! Hey, anybody seen my link monkey? Neuron holds forth. :)

2010?

Will 2010 look like 1995-97?

I'm inclined to think so, with reservations due to the increasing importance of the WWW in commerce.

Or, in 2010 will we turn over link duties to some trusted opensource/Web3.0 project that automatically adds on topic links to our sites OR that sends us - by our consent - lists of links and descriptions of websites that appear suited to our websites?

What will 2010 look like and what, if anything, can you do now to be ready?

[ScottD]

I think the days of links being of use in search engine listings are numbered. I'm sure more value will come from other ways of judging sites. Firstly, the information gathered by toolbars:

- time spent on a site?
- did the user press the happy button?
- relating the search made to both of the above
- sites you store in your "favourites"
- where did you shop versus where did you buy?

other than that I have no doubt that Google for one is heading away from links anyway, measuring the age of the domain, the clean structure, the broken links, the logic of the structure, penalising for borrowed content, etc etc etc

Then again I'm not sure the search engines themselves will last as such. Or even the internet. Hopefully not, then I can stop staring at this screen and watching Google continuously.

Scott

[Webwork]

I wonder how real people see links and linking? I mean ordinary folk. Not like people who hang out in webmaster forums.

Then again, do real people count? I mean, the don't have websites, so do they vote by linking?

Oh, wait . . . real people are starting to have blogs . . and post on massive social network sites . . and maybe a few more babyboomers are joining hobbyist sites . .

I wonder what the effect of increasing numbers of real people getting - and getting used to using - their linking ability will have on the role of links?

I vote for more real people. They're less contrived in their linking, right?

Oh, wait . . isn't buzz marketing emerging to take advantage of more people getting engaged in online communities.

I'm so confused about the future of linking and it's roll.

Any futurists out there?

[Kufu]

I wonder how real people see links and linking? I mean ordinary folk.

Goodie! I always knew that I was extraordinary. :)

[Webwork]

Interesting.

Read a thread here, at WebmasterWorld today, that commented about how links from someone's MySpace profile drove registrations to their forum by upwards of 8,000 new members over a period of less than a year.

I'm sure that comment hasn't gone unnoticed.

So, are social networking sites the new blogspam heaven equivalent . . . OR are we talking some real potential?

So, social networking - like blogging - is the latest conduit of "free" link marketing?

Wait . . a link in the context of social networking isn't just a link, is it? It's a link with an endorsement, right?

So a social networking "free" link isn't just another link.

Pssst: Anyone paying any popular members of social networking sites to put up a link to your site?

What next?