A link exchange is a confederation of

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

s that operates similarly to a web ring.

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 register their websites with a central organization, that runs the exchange, and in turn receive from the exchange

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

code which they insert into their web pages. In contrast to a web ring, where the HTML code simply comprises simple circular ring navigation hyperlinks, in a link exchange the HTML code causes the display of banner advertisements, for the sites of other members of the exchange, on the member web sites, and webmasters have to create such banner advertisements for their own web sites. The banners are downloaded from the exchange. A monitor on the exchange determines, from referral information supplied by

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

s, how many times a member website has displayed the banner advertisements of other members and credits that member with a number of displays of its banner on some other member's web site. Link exchanges usually operate on a 2:1 ratio, such that for every two times a member shows a second member's banner advertisement, that second member displays the first member's banner advertisement. This page impressions:credits ratio is the exchange rate. One of the earliest link exchanges was

LinkExchange LinkExchange was a popular Internet advertising cooperative, similar in function to a webring, originally known as Internet Link Exchange or ILE. It was founded in March 1996 by 23-year-old Harvard graduates Tony Hsieh (who later went on to inves ...

, a company that is now owned by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

. Link exchanges have advantages and disadvantages from the point of view of those using 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 ...

for

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

. On the one hand, they have the advantages of bringing in a highly targeted readership (for link exchanges where all members of the exchange have similar websites), of increasing the "link popularity" of a site with

Web search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s, and of being relatively stable methods of hyperlinking. On the other hand, they have the disadvantages of potentially distracting visitors away to other sites before they have fully explored the site that the original link was on. Engaging in link exchanges or paid linking activity is highly discouraged by Google and not recommended for webmasters seeking an advantage in search engine rankings. Google considers excessive link exchanges and exchanging reciprocal links "Link Schemes" and can suppress the linked site in search engine results or block it altogether.

References

Internet terminology Online advertising Search engine optimization Web navigation {{Web-stub

See also

References