I recently received an email from Amazon that announced an open beta for their latest linking concept. The idea? With a small piece of javascript code Amazon will embed contextually related links on existing posts in your site. If the context is right, this is a really neat way to effortlessly drive revenue from older content.

I experiment with paid linking technologies in order to keep on top of the business and revenue aspects of web communication. If people don't have reliable techniques for earning revenue on the web then great ideas may not survive. Adding new links in older material sounds like a potentially fruitful idea for many web writers.

I picked a single article from 2004 as a trial page for Amazon's context links; my reminesces of Rick James after the news of his death in August 2004. It's a pretty focused piece on James' music, his career and a Buffalo concert appearance. I figured the context was pretty clear. I expected to see links to Rick James CD's, books on music -- maybe stuff about funk, R&B -- or maybe videos highlighting rock concerts. What did I get? A link to novel about a girl's life in a ghetto keying off of my reference to one of Rick James hit songs, "Ghetto Life". That's a miss. A link to a book about Buffalo Bill -- of all things -- where I mentioned a Rick James show in Buffalo. A bigger miss.

The craziest link of all? Later in the post I mention the late, great singer Robert Palmer which Amazon picked up as a link to "Biostatistical Genetics and Genetic Epidemiology" by Robert C. Elston. Robert Palmer and Robert C. Elston --get it? See how much similarity there is there? Neil Young is also mentioned in the post but there is no link related to him.

I'm not sure where the context is in those links but not a single one refers to a book, CD or video by any of the artists mentioned in the post. What's more, the unrelated links embedded by Amazon are just going to annoy readers. Since these links are added "live" by Amazon, they will probably change and morph. I'm going to keep the context links live on just this single post to see what happens. For now, it looks like this program will be beta just a wee bit longer.

If you are experimenting with context links or if you have any input you would like to provide on this concept please leave a comment here on bradfordgibson.net.