Deep linking is defined by Wikipedia as follows:

Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website, instead of that website's main or home page. Such links are called deep links.

Continuing on why deep linking might be negatively viewed:

Some commercial websites object to other sites making deep links into their content either because it bypasses advertising on their main pages, passes off their content as that of the linker or, like The Wall Street Journal, they charge users for permanently-valid links. Sometimes, deep linking has led to legal action such as in the 1997 case of Ticketmaster versus Microsoft, where Microsoft deep-linked to Ticketmaster's site from its Sidewalk service.

That said, I wonder if deep linking might be - at times - acceptable. In following Leo Laporte's example, I have chosen to include a listing of my user profiles as I have created them on other services. I do this to not only help people find content I am sharing using other online services but to also indirectly advertise that such sites can be used to share content.


The only real issue here is that the icons I've used to identified such services are actually hosted on the websites themselves (they are favicons).

• Is such a practice inappropriate?
• Should I host the favicons on my own site and link to them there?
• Is this more of an issue for Leo Laporte (with his blog's millions of monthly visitors) than it is for me (with my blog's three or four uniques)?
  

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