An autolink is a

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text ...

added automatically to a

hypermedia Hypermedia, an extension of the term hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term ''multimedia'', which may include non-interact ...

document, after it has been authored or

published Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, new ...

. Automatic hyperlinking describes the process or the software feature that produces autolinks. Segments of the hypermedia are identified through a process of

pattern matching In computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking a given sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually has to be exact: "either it will or will not be ...

. For example, in hypertext, the software could recognise textual patterns for street addresses, phone numbers,

ISBN The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition an ...

s, or

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifi ...

s. In a distributed hypermedia system, such as the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

, autolinking can be carried out by client or server software. For example, a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

could add links to a web page as it sends it to a web browser. A browser can also add links to a page after it has received it from the server.

Examples

Google Toolbar

AutoLink is a feature of the

Google Toolbar Google Toolbar is a discontinued web browser toolbar for Internet Explorer, developed by Google. It was first released in 2000 for Internet Explorer 5. Google Toolbar was also distributed as a Mozilla plug-in for Firefox from September 2005 to J ...

. Users can convert street addresses,

s in a web page in their browser to links by clicking a button on Google Toolbar. The links direct the users to Google Maps for street addresses and

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

.com for book information.Google Answers: Google Toolbar Autolink feature
-> Since introduced in February 2005, there has been a lot of controversy about this feature. Some

webmaster A webmaster is a person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. The title may refer to web architects, web developers, site authors, website administrators, website owners, website coordinators, or website publishers. The duties of ...

s expressed their concerns over the AutoLink feature claiming that Google had no rights to modify their webpages or to direct the users to a commercial website such as Amazon. This caused Barnes & Noble, a competitor of

, to link all ISBNs on their site back to themselves to prevent people clicking them to take them to their competitor. Google sceptics compare it with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

's unpopular

SmartTag SmartTAG (acronym in Malay for Sistem Membayar Automatik Rangkaian Tol or "Toll Network Automatic Payment Systems") is an on-board unit (OBU) vehicle-based device used as an electronic toll collection (ETC) system over long distances (maximum ...

s, which ultimately proved too controversial and were dropped.

Trac Wiki Engine

Trac Trac is an open-source, web-based project management and bug tracking system. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Trac ...

is a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

for

issue tracking An issue tracking system (also ITS, trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system) is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues. Issue tracking systems are generally used in colla ...

in software development. It has a

wiki engine Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

which is used for all text and documentation in the system. This includes not only wiki pages but also tickets and check-in log messages. These pieces of text have AutoLinks created, for example the text ticket:1 links to ticket 1. This is an example of server-side AutoLinking.

AutoLinker

AutoLinker is a

plugin Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of softwar ...

application which has been developed for

vBulletin vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software package sold by MH Sub I, LLC doing business as vBulletin (formerly Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions). It is written in PHP and uses a MariaDB or MySQL database server. Similar produ ...

forum software. It allows

keywords Keyword may refer to: Computing * Keyword (Internet search), a word or phrase typically used by bloggers or online content creator to rank a web page on a particular topic * Index term, a term used as a keyword to documents in an information syste ...

set by the board

administrator Administrator or admin may refer to: Job roles Computing and internet * Database administrator, a person who is responsible for the environmental aspects of a database * Forum administrator, one who oversees discussions on an Internet forum * N ...

to be turned into hyperlinks or popups automatically any time they are used in a forum post or message.

Tomboy Notes

Tomboy Notes Tomboy is a free and open-source desktop notetaking app written for Windows, macOS, Linux, and BSD operating systems. Tomboy is part of the GNOME desktop environment. As Ubuntu changed over time and its cloud synchronization software Ubunt ...

is a

personal wiki A personal wiki is wiki software that allows individual users to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without collaborative software or multiple users. Personal wiki soft ...

and text editor for Linux that creates automatic hyperlinks for web and

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Enginee ...

es while the text is being edited.

Moodle

The

moodle Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in sc ...

online course platform uses autolinking for automatic linking of terms within a moodle site to a

glossary A glossary (from grc, γλῶσσα, ''glossa''; language, speech, wording) also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a gl ...

or database entries, or to resources within the same course.

Firefox plugin linkator

Linkator takes a different stance on the concept of autolinking by automatically creating a search link from ''manually'' selected text.

Wiki Hyperlinks

Wiki Hyperlinks searches for entities in a given text which are title case, then automatically adds a hyperlink to each entity from Wikipedia. It also has a feature for creating hyperlinks from manual text selections.

Saga

Saga is a note-taking application that creates automatic links between notes. The application recognizes page titles and headings and automatically creates links to them when they are mentioned inside notes. By using autolinks users can quickly create connected knowledge bases.

References

{{reflist Hypermedia Tasks of natural language processing