Saturday, February 7, 2009

A Brief Morning Query.

As was pointed out a day or so ago, other folks' blogs seem to be periodically popping up as links to some of my posts. Now I have nothing against people linking my posts...in fact, I'm completely in favor of it. But the links seem to be generating spontaneously, without any action on the "linkee's" part or mine. And the links seem to have no relevance to the post they're linking.

Take, for example, the two links to yesterday's post. I can't find any relevant connection. I seriously doubt the linkee generated these links. Based on the fact that I know the linkee has visited here periodically, I'm confident the internet didn't just randomly select her blog out of all the blogs in the world, but how did the links appear?

If anyone knows how this came about, please educate me. I'm confused. (which is a natural state of affairs, but I've got enough to be confused about without any outside influences, thank you very much.)

P.S. If the linkee wishes to be un-linked, let me know by email (linked on my profile) and I think I have the technology to delete the links.

P.P.S. The word "link" was used 15 (now 16) times in this short post. I humbly regret its overuse and am amenable to any suggested substitutes or synonyms. Suggest away.

6 comments:

Eric said...

See, Nathan, that's what I've been wondering. And your blog is the only one I've seen doing it.

The irony in this specific instance, is that the post I have scheduled for Monday at my blog does link to yours. Will that link properly? Or to another page? Will it exorcise the seemingly-random links that have been made? Will it generate a microscopic black hole that will fail to evaporate due to Hawking Radiation and ultimately devour the Earth? Probably. Meanwhile, it's pretty weird behavior.

Have you checked the Blogger FAQ or anything like that?

Nathan said...

As Sgt. Schultz would have said,

"I've checked nossink!"

Ilya said...

Every time my latest post pops up in your blogroll widget, I get a link from your last post (you can't see them on my pages, because I do not allow trackbacks, but they get recorded in my Admin panel). Same from Eric, Janiece, JTS... It must be a "feature" of the Blogger widget...

Eric said...

It's a good hypothesis, Ilya, but Nathan's blog is the only one that behaves that way, and several of us also use the Blogger blogroll widget....

Although (maybe Ilya's on to something)... there was that issue a month or so ago with the blogroll widgets not working for some users, and it was around the same time that was "fixed" that Nathan's blog seemed to start showing the weird behavior. So maybe the answer lies in there somewhere?

MWT said...

It's definitely something to do with the sidebar. And I don't think it's just Nathan's, but Nathan's is the one that seems to appear most prominently elsewhere. I've seen Janiece's and Eric's also.

Also, if Nathan writes two posts in a short timeframe, sometimes the first post will unlink and the second one take its place.

Nathan said...

I suppose I'll have to start looking into this. Can you guys please email me whenever one shows up? with description of what linked?

Thanks.