Olympics linking strategy

[francis]

I've seen this bizarre linking policy (http://www.dontlink.com/) before (site seems to be old and unmaintained), but it's strange that the Anthens Olympics would have the same policy (http://www.athens2004.com/athens2004/page/legacy?lang=en&cid=dd7e01e3ac979f00VgnVCMServer28130b0aRCRD). You'd think that they would want people to link to their site, especially as it's only really going to be of interest for a few months more. It will also be interesting to see if they can enforce such a policy.

[James]

The only bit I understand is them trying to get webmasters to use "Athens 2004" as the hyperlink. That will help with SEO. The rest is ridiculous and as you say, probably unenforceable.

However, whatever their SEO strategy is, it works. Type in "Athens" to Google and you get the olympic site ranked number 1.

This is probably more due to the lack of decent sites about Athens though, so they're easily beat.

[francis]

Looks like their lawyers might be in for a busy time:

http://www.sportsfilter.com/comments.cfm/3552
http://monkeyfilter.com/link.php/4084
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/35036

Much pottymouth on the MeFi link

[Tom]

Or maybe there won't be any work for lawyers. See:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/question.cgi?QuestionID=166
and more refs at:
ODP refs on deep linking (http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Law/Legal_Information/Computer_and_Technology_Law/Internet/Linking_Law/Deep_Linking/).

[francis]

And this from the W3C (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html) (although its Tim BC's personal view only).

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Later: more people doing the same (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=%22hypertext%20links%20to%20this%20site%2C%20you %20must%20contact%22).