Deep linking

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Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is the act of placing on a Web page a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to that website's main or home page. Such links are called deep links.

The link [http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html] is an example of a deep link. The URL contains all the information needed to point to a particular item, in this case the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instead of the United Nations home page at [http://www.un.org].

The technology behind the World Wide Web, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), does not actually make any distinction between "deep" links and any other links—all links are functionally equal. This is intentional; one of the designed purposes of the Web is to allow authors to link to any published document on another site. The possibility of so-called "deep" linking is therefore built into the Web technology of HTTP and URLs by default—while a site can attempt to restrict deep links, to do so requires extra effort. According to the World Wide Web Consortium Technical Architecture Group, "any attempt to forbid the practice of deep linking is based on a misunderstanding of the technology, and threatens to undermine the functioning of the Web as a whole". Tim Bray, editor. "Deep Linking" in the World Wide Web. TAG Finding 11 Sep 2003. [link]

Some commercial websites object to other sites making deep links into their content, either because it bypasses advertising on their main pages, passes off their content as that of the linker or, like The Wall Street Journal, they charge users for permanently-valid links. Sometimes deep linking has led to legal action, such as in the 1997 case of Ticketmaster versus Microsoft, where Microsoft deep-linked to Ticketmaster's site from its Sidewalk service. Many critics charge that such sites simply want to establish policies that will "license" such links to the highest bidder. They argue that links are a fundamental part of "user-oriented" web browsing. Probably the earliest legal case arising out of deep-linking was the 1996 Scottish case of Shetland Times vs Shetland News where the Times accused the News of appropriating stories on the Times' website as its own.

Critics say that the term 'deep linking' is unnecessary: deep linking is nothing other than hyperlinking.

Even those who find no fault with deep linking still often do not tolerate direct linking, the act of using media from another website directly within one's own website. It causes browsers to request the image directly from the original web server, using the creator's network bandwidth without any benefit to them.

In the beginning of 2006, in a case between the search engine Bixee.com and job site Naukri.com, the Delhi High Court in India prohibited Bixee.com from deeplinking to Naukri.com.

In a February 2006-ruling, the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court (Copenhagen) found systematical crawling, indexing and deeplinking by portal site OFiR.dk of real estate site Home.dk not to conflict with Danish law or the database directive of the European Union. The Court even stated that search engines are desirable for the functioning of the Internet of today. And that one, when publishing information on the Internet, must assume - and accept - that search engines deep link to individual pages of one's website.

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