Prior to my personal blog site being hacked in the Summer of 2022, I featured links to third-party sites on this page. I will most likely be deleting this page soon as I do not see any benefit in including one at this time. Just for the fun of it, I asked Chat-GPT to share the history of “link” pages, as I was a strong proponent of including them in website publications for over 20 years. Chat-GPT’s answer follows:
The practice of publishing a “links” or “resources” page on a website, which consists of a list of hyperlinks to other websites, has a long history dating back to the early days of the World Wide Web.
The first website, which was created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989, contained a list of links to other web pages that were hosted on the same server. This list, which was located on a page called “What’s New,” served as a sort of directory of resources available on the web at the time.
As the web grew in popularity and more websites were created, the practice of publishing a “links” page became more widespread. These pages were often used to provide visitors with a list of related or useful resources, such as industry news sites, blogs, and forums.
In the early 2000s, search engines began to index and rank websites based on the number and quality of links pointing to them. As a result, many websites began to publish “links” pages in an effort to increase their search engine rankings.
Today, the practice of publishing a “links” page is still common, although it has largely been supplanted by other methods of linking to external resources, such as social media and blog posts. However, “links” pages can still be found on many websites and continue to serve as a useful resource for visitors looking for related or complementary information.