PUBLIC MARKS with search i-link

Link using our stable URL pattern for titles, issues, editions, and pages.

Linked Data views of information about titles, batches, issues, and pages in RDF/XML.

When searching for something on the web we’ve all had the experience of clicking on a link in a search engine’s results page only to find that the page no longer exists. If there’s no information on that page other than a default error message, the most likely course of action on the user’s part is to press the back button and try the next search result.

As site authors we can make our error pages more meaningful to our users, so that an error becomes an opportunity to bring the user back into a site and show them content that’s relevant to what they’re looking for. In this article I’ll show you how to do just that.

flickr_logo.pngFlickr just announced support for OpenStreetMap, the wiki-like mapping service that allows users to create and edit maps. Starting today, photos that are tagged with an OpenStreetMap node ID will include a link to OpenStreetMap (OSM) right underneath the photo. OSM assigns a random number to objects on its maps and Flickr can now read this number and also extract additional data about places from the OSM database. In addition, Flickr also announced that it will now support venue ID tags for the increasingly popular Foursquare service.

We generate these deep links completely algorithmically, based on page structure, so they could be displayed for any site (and of course money isn't involved in any way, so you can't pay to get these links). There are a few things you can do to increase the chances that they might appear on your pages. First, ensure that long, multi-topic pages on your site are well-structured and broken into distinct logical sections. Second, ensure that each section has an associated anchor with a descriptive name (i.e., not just "Section 2.1"), and that your page includes a "table of contents" which links to the individual anchors. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won't see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

# There are meaningful “entry points” into the app - URIs. (No, I’m not going to mention the R-word.) It’s simply entirely unacceptable for a Web app to expose only a single URI, break the “Back” button, and disallow linking. Frameworks that don’t support URIs for application concepts, such as every customer, order, contact report, document etc. should simply be banned.

# Application boundaries are a concern to developers, not users. The Web is about linking stuff together, without any concern about application boundaries. There’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be able to follow a link in your CRM application that takes you to a product page in your online catalog, or from a customer record to the information about when they last logged in to the Web site, or from a page that’s part of a complex business process UI to the appropriate documentation and on to the discussion group where you can tell everybody how much it sucks.

# Documents are accessible in a standard way. The idea of accessing any kind of document, such as an insurance application form that’s been scanned in, a letter sent to a business partner last year, or a contract with a business partner, by any other means than an HTTP GET is just stupid.

Over the next few days, we will be releasing a feature that allows administrators of Facebook Pages to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically. This will only link Facebook Pages to Twitter, not your individual profile.