Forum Moderators: martinibuster
My first thoughts were that those webmasters listed were simply a "sandwich short of a picnic" when it comes to online promotion. I was suspecting this in these cases as a lot of them are Government sites, but then a lot of the are high profile offline companies as well whichmade me go "Huh?".
But then I also wonder whether some of our less experienced webmastering collegues are become scared of being penalised by bad-link-association.
So I thought I would throw the discussion open.
Is it
a) Stupidity/Aloofnes etc,
b) Fear of bad-link-association,
c) Both, or
d) None of the above?
Thoughts anyone?
Onya
Woz
BMW may not appreciate a link from "Yokels'r'us"
I think it's the fear factor brought about by a visious circle of chineese wispers. One person starts a rumor and next thing every webmaster and his dog are ducking for cover. It is possible that when the sites in question where being built there was a "bad neighbourhood" rumor going around.
One thing worth thinking about is...
Is there a commmon factor in the mentioned sites such as, same web design company or seo company. Or posibaly these sites are doing something that could get them penalised and are keen to avoid being discovered and hence do not want any inbound links.
I will meet them next week to get some input about this...
Some business(driven by corporate litigation culture)view the fact that because the website is about their company they have the right to control who views what part of it and in what manner.
This flies in the face of internet people who view the internet as a public forum.
Shanz
If an organisation puts a page onto the public internet it is because they want it to be seen.
If people point folks to that page directly thats just directing people to a point in a third party publication. There is no guarantee that it will still be there some weeks later anyhow.
I don't think there are many laws that can prohibit this though a number of corporate lawyers seem to think so, judging by some tos that I have seen. What certainly should be the case imho is that any lawyer writing clauses (or companies publishing them) that are in fact not enforcable in law or which even may remove the normal expected human rights of others should I think in some way be publicly penalised.
Anyhow back to the issue, if they want to stop deep linking dead in its tracks its interesting to ask why. I think often its to do with reduced ad exposure and therefore damage to their expected business model.
Cant have been a very sophisticated one then can it. They could either charge to issue usernames and passwords or develop decent advert serving programs rather than relying on entry page advertisng route through adverts for their revenues.
Its just an opinion, feel free to disagree :-)
There's gotta be another reason.
G.
Part of it may be a more rational concern that people who deep link into the site may not get the full site experience - the branding, the ads, the intro, etc. - and hence may be less likely to become customers.
The giant supermarkets always put the milk in the back of the store to force you to walk past the snacks, the promotions, etc. If I offered a time-saving service to use a Star Trek style transporter to beam customers directly to and from the dairy department, the store wouldn't be real happy. Sure, they'd sell more milk, but they might not be convertng the customers to full-range buyers. It's not a perfect analogy, but I think that kind of thinking is part of the concern.
Personally, I love people who deeplink to my sites... :)
Reasons:
I don't want any SE to find it..Yes i know all about robots.txt but in my eyes if somebody searches for davens blue widget and there is a link on someones site to www.davesbw.com the place to find all about davens blue widgets then the SE which I didn't want to find my site just passed a surfer indirectly to my site.
on the Site there are reports and articles which are for clients only and are password protected you can guarantee if the url was known then my servers would be under a brute force attack again and I would have to dump the url and reg another.
other reasons for not wanting people to link to your site "go to hell" in google last was pointing M$ i'm pretty dam sure that any major car manufacturer would not want a NO1 serp for "crap cars" or any SEO company been NO1 from "bad SEO advice" or "seoname got me banned"
The same reasons why people use robots.txt some sites just want to control how their data is veiwed.
DaveN
you can guarantee if the url was known then my servers would be under a brute force attack
I can understand why you might cringe at incoming links from certain places, especially when you consider possible undesired placement on SERPs. However, I fail to see how anyone can possibly forbid me from making a link. How would this be different from publishing the title and ISBN of a book I think you might want to read? The publisher might not like it if, say, a bunch of racists decide to reccomend some new book on plant taxonomy, but they can hardly prevent it.
I think they were only just trying to reduce the bandwidth they use. They probably are a popular site that can get along by the word of the mouth, in fact, they might be even over-shooting their bandwidth limit due to their popularity!
That could be why they do not want more people to know about their website.
What an awful problem to have... "Stop linking to me, PLEASE! I can't stand the traffic!" ;)
web = links
It's real simple.
Richard Lowe
I agree, they are clueless. Well said.
You dont I assume think that the biggest real brand names in the world should welcome anyone linking to their site with the words "rubbish product" or "theiving abusers" or some such ...
Having spent millions to position their brands in the minds of their target customers, why should they stop all this when approaching the internet?
They may not be able to stop you linking at all to their site but they are perfectly likely, and reasonably so, to try to influence the quality of their inward and outward links as much as is in their ability.
web = links
right so do you not wish to have any influence on who links and how they do it..
For example: I doubt anyone on this board would be happy for someone to add all their sites to linkfarm programms without their consent?
You dont I assume think that the biggest real brand names in the world should welcome anyone linking to their site with the words "rubbish product" or "theiving abusers" or some such ...
Either '<a href="http://www.example.com/">theiving offspring of unmarried parents</a>' is libel/defamation/slander/etc or it is free speech, depending on whether in the particular situation the assertion that the proprietors of example.com are theiving offspring of unmarried parents fits that deffinition or not. If it does fit one of those categorizations, it's already actionable under established law. If it doesn't, suck it up. It's the price of living in a society that allows free speech. Personally, I'm more than willing to allow a few instances of <a href="http://www.dingman.org/~andrew/">slimy SOB</a> as the price for not having my writing censored.
richlowe thats an enormous oversimplification.
It's not an oversimplification. It's the way it is. Generally truth is simple.
One exception: linking to PAGES is okay. Linking to objects (movies, graphics and such) is not okay. This is generally accepted as good manners.
You dont I assume think that the biggest real brand names in the world should welcome anyone linking to their site with the words "rubbish product" or "theiving abusers" or some such ...
Didn't say inbound links are welcome, just said it's the way of the web. The web is about linking. If you expose something to the world on the web, then why would you be surprised if people linked, especially if it was worth linking to.
They may not be able to stop you linking at all to their site but they are perfectly likely, and reasonably so, to try to influence the quality of their inward and outward links as much as is in their ability.
Of course they should try. I just don't believe it's a question for the courts, lawyers or silly legal statements to decide.
web = links
right so do you not wish to have any influence on who links and how they do it..
No, that's not what I meant. What i mean is a blanket statement saying "you cannot link to my site or my pages without my permission" is not just silly, it's shows the individual or company that put up the notice is completely ignorant of reality.
For example: I doubt anyone on this board would be happy for someone to add all their sites to linkfarm programms without their consent?
Who cares as long as you don't link to the farms? It won't have have any negative effect. Personally, I have more important things to worry about.
Richard Lowe
Despite what I have written about lawyers posting unenforcable clauses (perhaps in another forum can't recall) its also to be expected that if a company can achieve some influence in their interests by use of scary legalese they will probably try.
enough already .... :-)
I just don't believe it's a question for the courts, lawyers or silly legal statements to decide.
I certainly do, since who else could interpret the law made by parliament. And the law is on your side if you use links in a fair manner.
Personally I donīt really care about whether somebody wants or allows me to link to them. I put the link on my site whenever I want. If it is on topic and not defamatory there is nothing they can do, since a link falls under the fair use priviledge just as a short quote (argumentum a maiore ad minus).
An author who publishes a book cannot prevent me from quoting certain passages from it. Itīs the same with links.
Andreas
