> Technologists criticizing websites for not linking to external primary sources is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
Unless you are a technologist that believes the best SEO is not gaming your internal links but being a good Web-citizen (i.e. providing external links to primary sources). ;)
For sure I do. I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.
Is it fair to say that most popular news websites tend to link more often to themselves than external sites? Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.
> I'm just trying to further theorize why many websites do not link externally. Short-sightedness is the best I can come up with.
Surely some sort of short-sightedness I think mostly related to the paper-printing philosophy presented by the ultimate-parent comment.
From an SEO angle, I'm guessing it has less to do with internal vs external links, but an attempt to generate more backlinks to the secondary source (boosting SEO of the secondary source) instead of providing an easier path to create backlinks to the primary source.
> Recently I've noticed more are linking to primary sources, but it wasn't so common as recent as 2 years ago, in my recollection.
I'm glad this does seem to be the trend recently for a lot of sites; I don't remember so clearly the state a few years ago.
We trained these websites to link internally as much as possible to increase their page rank and ad revenue.
Technologists criticizing websites for not linking to external primary sources is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
I won't say we take the whole blame or even most but we do have a hand in it.