Showing Respect With Your Anchor Text

Bloggers and other web-based writers do a lot of linking. It's great for the Blogosphere. In fact it's really the only reason we have a Blogosphere. How often are our links misleading though? I'm not talking about "paid" or sponsored links that are deceptive and just trying to go after a click. That's another issue entirely. I'm talking about just the everyday point-of-reference links.

I started thinking about this as I came across a post on
What I'm getting at is that when Bits links the word "Ridicule" to one of their own posts, it kind of lends to the connotation that they were the ones ridiculing Hulu, which given Hulu's success, would make such a thing a little embarrassing.

I’m not trying to insult Bits. They just happened to have an example that caught my eye. In fact, it got me thinking about alled me on it, thinking that I was actually was trying to indicate such, and seeing his point, I changed the wording of the link.

This is not something we often think about, but things like this could actually shed negative light (even if in a very minute amount) on those we are linking to, who deserve to be credited for providing the information we're linking to. I think the "mouse-over" is taken for granted. People will see the URL for a link and sometimes decide whether or not they want to follow it based on that. Think about who you're linking to, and show them the respect they deserve with your choice of