The BBC’s missing link
Aug 20th, 2008 by handolio
It’s embedded YouTube videos and embraced social bookmarking, but in one particular area BBC News Online has always remained a little old fashioned: related links have remained fenced in the right-hand navigation pane.
Earlier, DanG spotted that the Beeb is trialling bringing links in from the cold; placing them in the body copy where they belong.
And, crucially, where everybody except long-standing news publishers has been putting them for years.
I wonder why that is? CaroLinkAnalyst recently woke me up to the fact that major news sites are only too aware of the value of an outgoing link, making sense of why they give them grudgingly if at all. By not putting them in the body copy, it’s almost as though they’re going out of their way not to be all that useful.
Still, if the BBC’s ham-fisted implementation, groaning under the weight of too much information, is the best anyone can do, perhaps they ought not bother after all.
Maybe the BBC is aware that it has many not-so-web-savvy users, and is terrified of the complaints that “I read such and such on your website” even when the reader in question has in fact clicked through to elsewhere. Hence, the horrible signposting – it’s an effort to save the poor, long-suffering duty log staff
One thing I wish they could signpost a little better is their links to video stories on their own site. I like reading, I don’t like watching video. If I knew that a story was video I wouldn’t click on the link. But often I don’t know until I get there…
After seemingly giving up they now appear to be experimenting again. Much better implementation.