No Link Love From Robert Scoble

Robert wrote a really interesting post on gestures Tuesday and for some reason decided to use my blog to make his point. I appreciate the attention. But he didn't link to me and got some heat for the lack of link love in the comments to his post.

I have to admit that it was the first thing I thought about when I read the post - "where is the link?"

To me linking is the single most important thing about the web. Google's whole system is based on links. If it weren't for links, the web would suck.

Don't get me wrong, I am not annoyed at Robert for the lack of a link. It's not a huge deal one way or the other. But I agree with Michael Moncur's comment on Robert's blog.

I don’t understand the point of the “no linking” thing. Is the idea that because I’m smart enough to use Google, I might as well do extra work? I doubt Fred will get any traffic from this. I for one didn’t bother finding him.

I read your weblog to find links to interesting things and people - take away the links, and you’d be left with one big, useless “in” joke.

Comment by Michael Moncur — August 1, 2006 @ 1:30 am

Comments (15) | Posted August 3, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

As you probably know, Robert was executing on Steve Gillmor's theory that no-link would bring you better quality traffic than if he had linked to your page.

Well, I was already subscribed to your blog - I use a newsreader, barely actually visit your pages to be honest. If Robert had linked, I might have clicked that day. I did not.

To think that "if you don't link then those who are REALLY interested in finding you will find you" is true. But it's also true that if you give them a link, they'd click as well, and then some other people too. And assuming that these "other people" aren't worth visiting you is wrong.

The no-link is a fancy theory but it's not in touch with the real world.

Posted by: RBA | Aug 3, 2006 6:18:41 AM

i think steve's theory is crap.

let people follow the links and they'll decide for themselves what is interesting or not.

any theory that suggests not linking is a dumb theory in my book

Posted by: fred | Aug 3, 2006 7:08:27 AM

Since I subscribe to a Bloglines search that scans for my name, and since you quoted my comment above, I ended up finding this post, enjoying it, and subscribing to your site.

I'm not sure if that proves the no-linkers' point, but it was certainly the most roundabout way I've ever followed a link before...

Posted by: Michael Moncur | Aug 3, 2006 7:23:20 AM

Was wondering when you'd weigh in. I'm with you Mr. Wilson. A "no link" policy is bad for the Net ecology. What's he (Steve) thinking!? He knows better than that! And for that matter, so does Mr. Scoble.

I'm sure your search referrers DID go up. How could they not? Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy given the source. If I had done that... well, you'd never have noticed the difference. :)

Posted by: Gerald Buckley | Aug 3, 2006 8:51:55 AM

Fred, you neglect the link love now and then!

Posted by: Rick | Aug 3, 2006 9:41:28 AM

Agreed, it's basic courtesy to provide the link and in the absence of an explicit explanation of why no-linking is better for the blogosphere, it does strike me as rich for him to make things harder for people.

Posted by: John Dodds | Aug 3, 2006 9:42:26 AM

Robert's philosophy - call it the theory of "missing links" - is deeply flawed. What else is the web if not a massively linked system of personal computers, servers, web pages and interactive applications?

Robert's theory is that everything that is relevant to me in the world must - for some reason or other - already be available to me. This is plain wrong.

Posted by: Uri | Aug 3, 2006 10:01:21 AM

The "no link" philosphy only works if 1) people know how to search for the link and 2)it is easy to find. Scoble, et al are assuming the only people reading their blogs would know how to search for a link to some "throw away" reference they make in their blog. This shuts out a number of readers who don't have very good computer skills.

Don't laugh - I work with people and businesses that aren't tech savvy and introduce them to blogs. These are smart business people who just don't like computers. A link is easy for them, but going through the whole effort of searching for the reference is daunting and just won't happen.

The "gesture" or "non linking" movement actually makes blogs harder to use.

Posted by: Diane Ensey | Aug 3, 2006 10:48:44 AM

Diane: I think Steve Gillmor only cares to have an audience of people who can figure out Google. He writes about enterprise IT. He wants to reach CTO's. If there's a CTO out there that doesn't know how to use Google they should be fired.

Posted by: Robert Scoble | Aug 3, 2006 12:19:39 PM

By the way. I linked to both Fred and Diane today. :-)

Posted by: Robert Scoble | Aug 3, 2006 12:20:21 PM

Funny, no link love was the the second thing I thought of when you selected one of my comments as "comment of the day" a little while back. I thought great, I'll get some google/yahoo/technorati juice from this, but alas there was no link to my blog in your post. I assume that's just because you copy/pasted the comment and the link didn't make it across.

Links are a definite currency on the web, with real ego and financial value attached. It's fairly self-evident that the "click-thru" rate of a link is much higher than that of no-link (I'd guess at least an order of magnitued, likely 2), so the argument would have to be that the traffic from no-link would be that much more valuable than traffic from a link. If find that dubious. How would you measure this? Perhaps with the "conversion" event being someone subscribing to your blog?

I'd guess that by every measureable method a link provides more value to the target than a no-link.

Posted by: Parand | Aug 3, 2006 1:48:09 PM

Robert: If there's a CTO out there that reads an author that doesn't link they should be fired. The idea that a CTO should have to spend more time locating information just because they're capable is absurd.

Posted by: Hans | Aug 3, 2006 2:09:28 PM

Is having a valid comment suppressed the opposite of link love? I left an important remark on Diane's blog a few hours ago, and it seems to have not been allowed through moderation.

The important point is that while linking seems like an intuitive courtesy, the law around links is still ambiguous:

http://www.jura.uni-tuebingen.de/bechtold/lcp.html

People are still being sued for linking. I found myself in court, and corporate team of lawyers (successfully) argued that a web page isn't really public until someone calls attention to it by linking to it. Sure this argument is stupid, and any good lawyer would have had this laughed out of court. However I'm poor, couldn't get legal representation, and the Judge just didn't get it.

This was just last year. So despite the fact the "links controversy" page was frozen, this is still an important issue. You may be slapping someone around for not linking to you today, but you could just as easily sue them for linking to you tomorrow.

Posted by: breakingranks | Aug 3, 2006 11:47:42 PM

"Maybe your gesture worked after all… but it took 48 hours to work its way through the tubes.

Comment by Michael Moncur — August 3, 2006 @ 4:28 am"

unfortunately the blogosphere is fractured and broken... where can i get the conversation all in one place?

Posted by: anonymous | Aug 4, 2006 1:48:21 AM

Link love? Courtesy? Google juice? WTF! You link to a page because it contains useful and relevant information. That should be your only consideration.

Posted by: Alex Farran | Aug 5, 2006 8:08:24 PM

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