Hyperlinking and Deeplinking
The world wide web has enable various web-sites, albeit owned individually by their owners, to virtually operate like one 'book'. The use of hyperlinks on web pages practically results in zero differentiation among contents of each of the web-sites. Any web-sites and in fact any pages on the Internet can be easily hyperlinked and such hyperlinking can be done without any knowledge or authorisation of the web-site being hyperlinked.
Web-site operators have the temptation of linking the inner content of certain web-sites interesting to them, thereby enriching their contents but at the same time, bypassing the front page and less inner pages of the web-sites. Such doing can or may offend the owner of the web-site being hyperlinked as integrity of the web-site is 'damaged', pages are bypassed thereby reducing the number of banner exposure.
A prudent web-site owner should adopt the following rule of thumbs when considering linking:
1. design the web-site with simple hyperlink only. Hyperlink should lead the user to the home page (first page) of the linked web-site.
2. use of trade mark or logo in the hyperlinks should be authorised by the trade mark and logo owner
3. do not deeplink other web-sites without prior consent or authorisation
4. do not link other web-sites by 'framing' unless with prior consent or authorisation.