As this blog has been running for a couple of years now, I think one of the most important parts of my job as a blogger is to use hyperlinks well. Personally, I have really embraced the concept of hyperlinking within my posts, as I think it is important, but others don’t seem to understand the true usefulness of hyperlinking.

Hyperlinking is an issue for many websites, as most refuse to do it. The BBC news website for example does not embed any links to external sources. The reason for this is two fold. Firstly when a writer puts a hyperlink within a post to an external site, their content is then link to the content of a third party’s site, which they do not control. This lack of control is a problem as if the third party, changes the content on the linked page to something different or inappropriate, the author may become libel. Secondly, if the linked site decides to take the post/page down, change their URL structure or the entire site goes down, this would therefore brake the hyperlink. Hyperlinking on a BBC’s news site would be complex, as it would add overhead, as a team would have to be created to check each linked site is still up and content on the linked page is the same. Then is there really a place for hyperlinking on news sites and the web in general?
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