A note on inbound/outbound links: only for readers who own a site or blog
Both Variety SF & my older Arthur Clarke Fansite are now configured to automatically generate outbound links corresponding to each inbound link on correct page.
Look for "Links to this post" at the bottom of a post's page; all inbound links to that page are listed there.
This is done by Google lookup - so a delay is involved. Page with inbound link should be in Google database (can take a few minutes to months, depending on page), & any extra caching delay of Blogger software underneath my sites. But it seems to work - at least in a couple of cases I personally verified.
Note this does not work for links to home page; only to a specific post. That's the way this Blogger feature works. Sorry.
Keeping my fingers crossed, though - hoping it doesn't generate too many spam links!!
2 comments:
Okay,
So do I need to do anything special when I link to your posts? Or is this just a feature to show how many (and which) posts link to a specific page?
Rusty: There are 3 things here:
1. Where an external page says something I don't, I find that "something" interesting, & I'm aware of the page, I often mention it in the body of the post. Some readers might want to pursue the link as a result. But these are very specific mentions - readers know what to expect when they click on such links. Letting me know of a related page can generate such mentions.
2. "Links to this post" is not a vanity section. It's a way of saying "thank you" - even if I didn't learn of the inbound link in time, or was too shy to personally leave a thank you note. At least that is the reason I added it.
3. Since there is an unpredictable delay in automatic link generation that depends on Google crawl & Blogger synchronization, you can manually add a link via comments earlier. Since that allows some explanation of what to expect when someone follows the link, I suppose more readers will pursue it. Note that even links inside comments are followed by search engines on Variety SF (Arthur Clarke Fansite is still on Blogger default of nofollow, but I'll fix it this weekend).
PS: Note the "Links to this post" also adds a default solicitation entry called "Create a Link" that I don't know how to get rid off - it's just baggage that comes with main feature! Sorry.
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