Deep linking, on the World Wide Web, is the act of placing on a Web page a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to that website s main or home page. Such links are called deep links .

The following link [http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html] is an example of a deep link. The URL contains all the information needed to point to a particular item, in this case the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, instead of the United Nations home page at [http://www.un.org http://www.un.org].

The technology behind the World Wide Web, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), does not actually make any distinction between deep links and any other links—all links are functionally equal. This is intentional; one of the designed purposes of the Web is to allow authors to link to any published document on another site. The possibility of so-called deep linking is therefore built into the Web technology of HTTP and URLs by default -- while a site can attempt to restrict deep links, to do so requires extra effort.

Some commercial websites object to other sites making deep links into their content, either because it bypasses advertising on their main pages or, like The Wall Street Journal , they charge users for permanently-valid links. Sometimes deep linking has led to legal action, such as in the 1997 case of Ticketmaster versus Microsoft, where Microsoft deep-linked to Ticketmaster s site from its Sidewalk service. Many critics charge that such sites simply want to establish policies that will license such links to the highest bidder. They argue that links are a fundamental part of user-oriented web browsing.

Deep Linking has also been objected to by websites that offer downloadable video, image, or music content. The sites say it is unfair, as they do not receive ad revenue.

Critics say that the term deep linking is unnecessary: deep linking is nothing else than hyperlinking.

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