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Thursday, March 31, 2005
Reveal those links, Nielsen says
How many blogs do you see that spell out the URLs of each link contained in a post? Links are one of the defining elements of blogs. It’s the links the build the communities and heighten visibility. In my Web writing workshop, I urge participants to get links out of the narrative and into a “more information” box as a means of reducing distraction and keeping readers focused on your content. But not in blogs. Links in the narrative are at the very heart of blog writing.
So how distracting would it be for someone reading a blog post to have to stop every few lines because in addition to a key word or two, the author has thrown in (perhaps in parantheses) the entire URL of the site to which the words are linked? According to Jakob Nielsen, the Web’s best known usability authority, the roadblock to readability these URLs would create isn’t an issue. In fact, according to the first installment of a discussion with Nielsen about blogs by Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski, links hidden behind words are one of the things he likes least about blogs: “That does not work, users want to know where the link will take them. It should be clearly labeled and not hidden.”
So let’s take a look at the last part of that paragraph as Nielsen would have it:
In fact, according to the first installment of a discussion with Nielsen (http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/
archives/2005/03/iave_been_tryin.php) about blogs by Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski, links hidden behind words are one of the things he likes least about blogs: “That does not work, users want to know where the link will take them. It should be clearly labeled and not hidden.”
And that’s with just one URL in the paragraph. The question, then, is whether readability should trump the desire to know where each link will take you. I don’t think so. Many links are meaningless even with the entire URL spelled out, and people read blogs primarily for the information, clicking links out of curiosity about what the reader has found to show them. I certainly don’t have Nielsen’s usability background, but my advice: Go ahead and keep those links hidden—and your readers engaged.
