Redundant links

[JustAnotherGuy]

Hi all,

I'm wondering, is redundant linking seen as a usability problem?
Personally it seems to be a good aid to navigation but I thought I'd check.

 

[brucie]

I'm wondering, is redundant linking seen as a usability problem?
Personally it seems to be a good aid to navigation but I thought I'd check.

if you're talking linking every page to every other page then it would
be overkill.

 

[JustAnotherGuy]

in post <JustAnotherGuy said:




if you're talking linking every page to every other page then it would
be overkill.

*laughs*

No, indeed not. I mean, if you have say a permanent navigation feature
that links to /page.html, now you have page2.html. On page2.html, you
think the content would probably lead the reader to page.html, so
provide another link in the body of the content. I guess it's obviously
no problem but i've seen things that seemed to me to be no problems
(home page linking to itself) that are... hence thought i'd verify.

 

[Michael Wilcox]

if you're talking linking every page to every other page then it would
be overkill.

Isn't that a site menu?

 

[kayodeok]

if you're talking linking every page to every other page then it
would be overkill.

actually, I thought he meant a page linking to itself though I recall
that the owner of useit.com (can't recall his name) thinking that it
was so passe.

 

[Fredo Vincentis]

*laughs*

No, indeed not. I mean, if you have say a permanent navigation feature
that links to /page.html, now you have page2.html. On page2.html, you
think the content would probably lead the reader to page.html, so
provide another link in the body of the content. I guess it's obviously
no problem but i've seen things that seemed to me to be no problems
(home page linking to itself) that are... hence thought i'd verify.

From a usability point of view it is often very handy to have additional
entry points to pages on your website. In particular if you are talking
about links that are part of the content it puts them into a context which
can help the user understand what to expect under the particular section. As
long as you don't link every single word of your text to another page, I
think it should be fine.

 

[rf]

Hi all,

I'm wondering, is redundant linking seen as a usability problem?

Depends what your definition of redundant linking is.

Maybe not usability, may be confusability.

Personally it seems to be a good aid to navigation but I thought I'd

check.

How do you intend to achieve this?

Cheers
Richard.

 

[JustAnotherGuy]

Depends what your definition of redundant linking is.

Three links on a page with different text within the <a> tags pointing
to the same place.

 

[Eric Bohlman]

No, indeed not. I mean, if you have say a permanent navigation feature
that links to /page.html, now you have page2.html. On page2.html, you
think the content would probably lead the reader to page.html, so
provide another link in the body of the content. I guess it's

That's a good idea because you can't be sure just *how* the reader arrived
on page2.html. He might have come there from a search engine or from a URL
typed in from a napkin a friend had scribbled on. You can't be sure he
came there from page 1.

obviously no problem but i've seen things that seemed to me to be no
problems (home page linking to itself) that are... hence thought i'd
verify.

Pages that link to themselves are a problem because the link misleads the
reader into thinking that following it will take him somewhere else, when
in fact all it does is create a duplicate entry in his browser history,
causing nothing to happen the next time he hits his back button. Obviously
not good for usability.

 

[rf]

Three links on a page with different text within the <a> tags pointing
to the same place.

Oh, as I suspected. Bloody confusing.

Don't do it.

Cheers
Richard.