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Incoming Link Analyzer - LinkTrakker
Guide to Unreachable Links
Some incoming hyperlinks cannot be retrieved by the LinkTrakker spider for verification (however, these links will build cumulative totals just like other links). Most "Unreachable" links fall into one of these following categories:
- Non-Web Resources - LinkTrakker's spider can only explore "webspace", so other types of links viewable through a browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer (including gopher, news and email links) cannot be retrieved for verification. For example, a link from a newsgroup posting might appear as:
news:3551AF9A.E23AA109@indiewire.com
- HTML Enhanced Email - many email programs now provide HTML display in email messages, allowing users to click on links that launch their Web browser. These links will frequently appear in LinkTrakker reports such as this one (showing a WebTV user clicking on a link in an email message):
wtv-mail:/readmail?message_id=2459
While this does help show you the results from email marketing campaigns and "word of mouth", LinkTrakker's spider does not try to go back and read their email ;)
- Local User Files - Files on the visitor's computer (but unaccessible to the rest of the Internet) also get categorized as "Unreachable." These can include "bookmark" files and HTML files under construction.
A few interesting things can be determined from these kinds of links (including browser type, computer platform, hard drive names, etc.) For example, links from files in a Windows 3.1 environment look like:
file:a:/WINDOWS/BOOKMAR~1.HTM
Links from MacIntosh machines frequently have "spaces" in the names, which get substituted with:
file:///Gibson/frame%20example/index.html
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