Chile Forum

For clarification I mean no text or key terms in a link. Just the web address.

Really we have Google to blame for this problem. Google many years ago decided that the links combined with the key term words contained in the link pointing from one website to another would indicate how popular a site was on the internet for such terms (or at least as a major component of their algo). Which it use to in some ways really indicate that, and still does to some extent. Then the search engine optimization crowd started pumping out link spam all over the internet to manipulate search results. Now, most of the time, the only reason anyone would put a text word in a link is to indicate to the search engines that it is the key terms they want associated with a particular site. Thus, they can no longer be trusted to really help people decide what they want to read. They are mostly for machines now.

Users on the internet have also become more savvy in recent years in reading and deciphering urls to determine if the link really does point to the information they want, what is the site about, what is their reputation, and so on.

The more we crack down on links with key terms in them to outbound sites, the less problems we have with spam and general troublemakers that end up wasting our time.