AnalyticsYahoo Auto-Linker Tool For Adding Links To Content

Yahoo Auto-Linker Tool For Adding Links To Content

Philipp Lenssen from Google Blogoscoped has created Yahoo Auto-Linker, which taps into the Yahoo API to
automatically insert links into any content you might have on your web site.

For example, say I wanted to add some links to this text from an earlier blog post that
Chris Sherman wrote:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star
ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Using Philipp’s tool, I get links added like this:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed, hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

Why would I do this? I wouldn’t! But Aaron Wall correctly suggests that those looking to create fake content that
seems real by having a few links scattered in might find this useful.

Of course, others might find legit reasons for making use of adding the links, such as having a fast way to perhaps add links to topics that could use further definition.

That brings me back to why I wouldn’t use such a tool for anything other than fun. I’d want to really understand exactly what sources are being used. This tool, from what I
can tell, simply uses whatever is the first listing for a particular word on Yahoo to be the link. First isn’t necessarily the best.

Interestingly, I’m guessing the Google API is also being employed as well. By default, the links will be generated from Yahoo results. However, you can choose to have
Google as an option. Here’s that same text using links generated out of Google. I’ve bolded those where Google comes up with different destinations than Yahoo:

A search for hotel room rates in San Francisco quickly searched more than 30 sites. Results pages include numerous refinement options (price, type of bed,
hotel star ratings, etc.) Results change dynamically as you refine your results. A
map, marked with the locations of the hotels, is also provided on results pages.

In either case, you can also have links take a nofollow attribute, as I’ve done with these examples. Have
fun giving it a play. Philip provides a few more details here: Yahoo Auto-Linker. Also note that despite
the name, this is completely unrelated to the Google Toolbar AutoLink feature that automatically inserts
links into pages that are viewed by those using the latest version of the Google Toolbar.

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