Online Journalism News

BBC News ends embedded links trial despite positive feedback

Posted: 03/12/08 By: Laura Oliver
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The BBC ended its trial of embedded links in news articles online in August despite a positive reception from readers.

The trial, which was developed in partnership with multimedia technology firm Apture, included links in selected articles to Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube and external news and organisation's sites.

In a post on the BBC Journalism Labs blog, Jonathan Austin said that out of the 1,200 comments readers made about the system, over 90 per cent of these said it was useful.

The site also received 306 negative comments about the trial with some users concerned about the BBC linking to Wikipedia, he added.

The icons used to denote some links and problems with accessibility caused by the use of Flash were also cited as potential problems.

In its review of bbc.co.uk in June, the BBC Trust said it was 'disappointed' with the click-through rate for the site's links to external sites and asked the corporation to improve this service to users.

The recent trial was a first step in revising BBC News' linking policy and 'refreshing how we markup our stories', said Austin.

"We've decided to go back to basics and look again at the fundamentals of linking in news stories," he wrote in the post.

"When the BBC News website started in 1997 we placed background links to the side of the article instead of inline, for technical and user experience reasons. We haven't revisited that decision in any significant way until now.

"Clearly many people appreciate high quality, crafted background links in news stories. And, for the right kind of background information, some people appreciate being able to see it without having to navigate away from the page."

The corporation is in discussions with Apture to see if the system can be adapted to address the issues raised by users.

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