On backlinking (or “internal linking”)
Today Louis Gray wrote a very interesting and critical story about Engadget’s backlinking practices — backlinking is what we (and some others) call linking back to previous editorial. Louis seems like a smart guy and makes some very good points, but I think he might have been under some false impression when he wrote his post, which led him to make a lot of generalizations about the differences between internal and external links that aren’t necessarily true. But it’s an interesting topic given my stance on keyword popovers and the like, and it’s definitely worth addressing.
To start, the thing that stuck out to me most is this:
“Engadget, an unquestioned leader in gadget and tech news, should feel confident enough to send readers off site and expect them to come back. … 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 got the impression after reading those bits that he wasn’t paying too close attention to how our stories are actually structured. On every single post (that we find from another news source, forums, or elsewhere that’s linkable) you’ll find that the story image and read link both direct readers to that source story (we also have a via link if we found that source story somewhere else). This isn’t new — we’ve done this since day one, and it’s like this on every single post. Our outbound links are never buried in the midst other links like on many other sites, because our ultimate goal is to provide a consistent (and consistently good) experience.
Even if you didn’t want to read Engadget’s editorial at all, you could just click read link after read link (or image after image) and find where we sourced our material from. The sad fact is most sites still make it hard to find their source link. So to say we are making some concerted “effort to keep the reader locked into the site as long as possible” couldn’t get much more inaccurate.
Of course, some may argue that the practice of backlinking is annoying. That’s debatable, but the thing that’s important to remember here is that at Engadget, our MO is to offer a compressed, editorialized edition of technology news. Sometimes we can go as long (or longer) as any big-name newspaper on an important story, but because we do (and must!) have greater respect for our readers’ intelligence and attention, generally speaking we expect them to understand the gist of what we’re talking about when we start to geek out.
In your average AP / Reuters article, for example, you’ll often spend a good chunk of your reading combing through the backgrounder paragraphs, which are there to help prepare you before the article gets to the heart of the matter. The primary goal of backlinking at Engadget is make use of previous news content as the backgrounder, letting people delve deeper into the subject without demanding everyone parse all that backgrounder text to get to what they want. This has worked really well so far, in my opinion, because I think we make great content.
It’s pretty easy to guess that no one — myself included — would want to click the backlinks if their payoff might not be that relevant. So I’m not going to say we’re at all perfect with our backlinking. In fact, I’m sure we could use additional fine tuning in what and how often we backlink, which I’ll be evaluating closer starting today. But the bottom line is we don’t consider backlinking some form of advertising or reader lock-in; our goal there is to provide additional context, plain and simple.
But I do disagree with Louis’s statement that he would “expect links to take him to those [topics'] respective sites” (paraphrased); we wouldn’t link the term Xbox 360 to xbox.com because everyone already knows how to find that site — and if you don’t, it’s an easy Google. We believe there’s more value for the average Engadget reader to be found in an easily parsed list of recent news involving that company or product — that is, after all, why one comes to Engadget, isn’t it? As a reader, I’d prefer instant access to that site’s news on the topic, not a link to a page that represents some company’s PR agenda.
So to sum it up: do we backlink our content? Yes, and we have since day one, way back in 2004. Do we think it adds value? Absolutely. Do we think it’s a substitute for external links? Obviously not, that’s why the majority of links in our content point outward, not inward.
Ryan, thanks for your response and your notes. I have seen Engadget’s linkage at the bottom, and while your site was lumped in with Mashable in this case, it was their story primarily that pushed me to respond.
My Engadget fandom doesn’t fade due to a definition of backlinks by any means, and I understand the “It’s an easy Google” comment. Your readers know apple.com and google.com and xbox.com for sure. But I don’t know if when they click on Apple or Google or Xbox within Engadget that they are looking for prior coverage. It’s also more of an issue with new companies who I haven’t heard of except through Engadget, where I will need to go to Google instead of right to their site from yours than it is with the aforementioned leaders.
I appreciate the discussion and hope to see more opinions and conversation. And… keep up the great work.
Comment by Louis Gray — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
[...] 2: Ryan Block of Engadget also added some of his own [...]
Pingback by Internal/Double Linking is a Bad Practice : The Last Podcast — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
I’ve noticed Engadget linking to a lot of tag pages. I don’t mind this with something as ubiquitous as the Xbox 360. When Sony launches a new model in some obscure laptop line though I think I’d prefer it go to a definitive post about the line instead of posts tagged as part of that line. Sometimes it’s just a toss up though: Do I want to see all Santa Rosa laptops or the definitive post on why I should care about Santa Rosa.
Lack of outbound linking? Meh. Engadget is the best resource when it comes to most of these topics. I think I’d be more annoyed if I had to trudge through someone elses site when all I’m doing is investigating a secondary link.
Comment by Eliot — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 1:37 pm
In the case of Engadget, I actually find backlinking to be incredibly useful. Since there’s so much content and information, I often find it hard to keep up, so when I land on a particular story the backlinking enables me to get the full scoop. I don’t HAVE to use Google, or further search Engadget, to get the background information.
Comment by veronica — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
I think that you’re brave for addressing the criticism, but don’t think you should dismiss it quite so quickly. It’s true that Engadget has always linked back to their own content, but in the past it was less frequent and was only for relevant articles that directly addressed the issue being discussed.
I don’t know when the “keyword” links started showing up, but started noticing them right before AOL took over. If you can’t at least point to something specific in the story, it seems kind of lazy to offer a catch all under the disguise of “background link.”
As an example, today Engadget linked to the term “Ice Cream” in a story. The link sends your readers to an Engadget search result for any story that has ever used the term ice cream. The 2nd link in the article to another specific Engadget ice cream story I get, but is the search results link really background for your smarter than average readers or is this really just smart SEO? I think it’s a distraction at the bare minimum.
I couldn’t find an archive of your 2003/04 content on the site, but if you look at the 04′ results on archive.org and count the self links, you can tell that they were there, but only to stories that added value. At initial glance it looks like in 04′, Engadget was putting in about one link back to their site on every other post.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040815005612/http://engadget.com/
Now, it’s at least two (or three) links per article and one of those links usually goes to a keyword search result, instead of to a specific piece of content that helps puts the story being discussed into perspective.
I don’t really care who you guys want to link to and you do publish so much content that it’s nice to be able to travel deeper and deeper into your commentary, but it’s kind of obnoxious when you click a link and there is no real payoff for the reader. If this helps pay for the content, than so be it, but I don’t think that you should cite precedence as a reason to avoid taking a more serious look at the practice.
Before linking to anything, the author should be at least taking the time to ask themselves if it adds to the story or not. If it doesn’t then why not leave it out or find a specific Engadget story that discusses the topic? Engadget has a lot of great content and linking back to it does help me to catch stuff that I’ve missed, but it’s the links that are choosen by an editor that provide real value, if I want to see search results, I’ve got computers that can help me find them.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 7:38 pm
generally speaking we expect them to understand the jist of what we’re talking about
I understand that you’re talking about the gist… but what’s a spelling mistake between friends?
I think you’re misunderstanding what people are upset about. Take, as an example, your story about Sandisk donating to the Alzheimers Association. You don’t even have to click on that link to know where it goes, because it describes itself.
In contrast, your story has a link on the word “Sandisk”. Given that it’s a story about Sandisk, and given that the link is on the word “Sandisk”, I’d assume that the link takes me to Sandisk’s website. Given your claim above that your internal links are to useful previous editorial, I’d expect it to link to a previous useful editorial. But, it does neither - it just links to all stories you’ve ever written tagged with Sandisk.
You’re not conforming to they way most people use links, and because of that, your site doesn’t do what I expect, and because of that, I have a poor user experience on your site.
You’re not conforming to your own claims about how your site behaves - if it did conform to your claims, that user experience would be marginally better than what actually happens.
This is why I don’t bother reading your site. Any interesting news you have gets reposted elsewhere, on sites that have links that do what I expect and don’t take me to useless index pages.
Comment by Zhasper — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 11:08 pm
Thanks Ryan for your follow up to Louis’ post. I posted at his site that I thought a lot of the internal linking was all about increasing ones page rank in the SE’s. I still believe that, and while I’m not as versed on the minutia of what is a “Best Practices” of linking, one only has to do a link report on this page to see that you have a 34 to 31 internal to external ration of links. I’d think that to be a good balance.
@Veronica, I also agree that quality back links can be helpful and one of those reasons I prefer to read a story online with all the hyper linking possibilities versus reading a paper or magazine article. I don’t however know how happy I’d be to click an internal link and be taken to a search results page.
Nonetheless, my main take aways are that internal linking, when done prudently and to add value to a story, are great and acceptable. I am also going to do my best to start incorporating the [VIA source_link] as well. I already perform little screen grabs of some important element from a source site (something like their logo, or if they have a remarkable image for a given story) and make sure I am linking that back to the story as well.
Comment by James D Kirk — Wednesday, September 12, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
I’ve re-read comment #1, and I’m wrong about what Luis was referring to. I think I’m correct about what other people are upset about though.
Comment by Zhasper — Thursday, September 13, 2007 @ 5:22 am
I was sort of buying your explanation until the last sentence: “Obviously not, that’s why the majority of links in our content point outward, not inward.” On the current Engadget front page, there are 16 outbound links, and 27 internal links. You’re free to link to whomever and whatever you want, of course, but that last sentence doesn’t appear to be true. I’ve developed a sort of mental block with Engadget posts - links within the body of the post are always internal, and at least half the time just links to tags or searches, so I just ignore them.
Comment by Fred — Thursday, September 13, 2007 @ 12:23 pm
Fred, that’s actually not so. There are sometimes counter examples, but statistically more than 50% of our links in our posts are outbound.
Comment by Ryan Block — Thursday, September 13, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
[...] On backlinking (or “internal linking”) [...]
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