A few days ago I was getting my knickers in a twist about link taxonomies. I was thinking they needed to be made more intelligent. Does anyone else ever get that feeling that you’re using a teaspoon to dig a hole, when someone else has a JCB?
Claire Harrison has written a great article in which she classifies different types of links. It’s rhetoric and semantics again, and it works for me. Here is the table.
| Describes an organization’s legal, formal policies, contact information, etc. that authenticate the site and its content. |
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| Provides opinion about the site and/or its content. |
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| Provides more factual information about site content by offering greater detail or painting the "bigger picture." |
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| Provides a specific example of content within a broader category. |
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| Moves users from the reading mode to one that requires a different kind of activity. |
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| Provides information that "informs" or supplements the site’s content. |
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| Allows users to narrow a search by making choices based on their age, sex, geographical location, life situation, personal interests, and so on. |
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