CIPR’s Social Media guidelines… how did that ‘deep linking’ nonsense creep in?
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations has done well to produce guidelines for public relations professionals working with social media, so congratulations to all concerned. Even if the paper is a little on the long side.
It must have been the length of the thing that caused me to miss this silliness on linking to websites:
‘(Deep) linking to information on another website:
Many websites state their policy on this within a Terms of Use / Copyright section; for example, larger companies often state that linking to the home page is acceptable but deep linking (i.e. linking to a page within the website) is not. Some websites also specify that all links to their pages must appear in a new window and not within the “frame” of the site linking to them.’
I thought we’d gotten over this a long, long time ago. Displaying somebody else’s content within a frame on your website is naughty if it might create the impression that that content is your own. But the rest of this advice should really be ignored completely.
Once somebody follows a link from your website to somebody else’s they have been passed – like a baton – to that other website. If that other website doesn’t want visitors to be passed on to it, you have to wonder why it exists.
That this appears under the heading of intellectual property, creates the impression (that used to be held by the technophobic communicators of old who prayed the internet was a fad and never used it themselves) the CIPR thinks that when I link directly to the social media guidelines, I’ve somehow made a copy of them. The print media equivalent would be to ask a publisher’s permission before advising someone to buy their newspaper for a story on page six. Far better advice would be not to put anything on the internet that isn’t for public consumption and to make sure that intranets and members only areas are secure.
Comments (2 comments)
Absolutely agree – anyone with any sense builds a website knowing that people will arrive on any page, and won’t necessarily come in via the homepage.
I haven’t got around to blogging about the CIPR guidelines; there are some many parts that frustrate me with the tone – even the email announcing them betrayed CIPR’s negative attitude to social media – headline was “CIPR tackles poor practice in social media”!
Simon Wakeman / March 1st, 2007, 8:15 pm / #
I agree. So lets look at this. If you do not want deep linking then you create a site that makes it hard (e.g. use flash, frames etc). If you ’say’ people can’t deep link and do not make it clear by actions or a page by page disclaimer (plus a robot block) then you are negligent in the protection of your property.
If you don’t want deep linking keep all the serach engines out.
Now…. try and survive.
I am with you, deep linking rules have to go.
David Phillips / March 3rd, 2007, 1:44 pm / #
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