Linking

Linking, or hyperlinking, is a way to connect information, words, ideas, or pictures to blocks of text or to images within a document, or between multiple sites on the Internet. Users may click on a phrase, word, or image within a Web page or Internet document to move to a new location or source of information.

Through the use of linking, paths are established that can lead to additional knowledge or information on subjects related to the original point of interest. The links may activate a Web site, a Web page, an audio [Page 290]clip, or a video clip. Active text links can be identified in most cases by their appearance in a contrasting color with underlining, and links leading to a different Web site altogether often begin with the prefix “http://.” The text of a previously clicked link generally changes color, allowing the user to identify what links have already been selected.

Linking within documents encourages users to read and write in a nonlinear fashion. This differs from the traditional path of consuming information in the exact order in which it appears or is presented. The linking process makes for a more dynamic, fluid relationship between the reader, the writer, and the information. The author or designer of a Web site may choose to refer to related ideas by linking to other information elsewhere on the Web page, or by linking to other ideas and works on other Web pages. Within one document, an author may choose to insert links to different sections of the document, allowing the reader to skip to the conclusion, for instance, by clicking on a word, phrase, or URL address within the text. In order to present outside ideas, the author may wait until the end of a document and link to information in the footnotes, or may allow the reader to go to other people's written comments through links to other sites at any point while reading through the original text.

The establishment of linking has also lead to new ways of measuring the use and popularity of Web sites. Linking Popularity measures how popular a site is by determining and analyzing other sites linked to it. Search engines, which allow Web users to locate specific information or sites on the Web, use Linking Popularity to review and rank the relevancy of a Web site presented as a result of a search. Although search engines have complex algorithms for determining the order in which searched information is presented, location and frequency of links to a site remain a dominant factor.