Orbitz not allowing inbound links.

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February 14th, 2005, 03:00 PM

pk_synths

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Join Date: May 2003

Location: Chicago

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Orbitz not allowing inbound links.

Here is a weird entry Orbitz just added to their TOS. For some reason or another, starting March 12th, Orbitz is not allowing any inbound links unless they give you permission to link to them. I would think a SEO in the company would tell them their mistake. Or do they know something we dont know??

Also how do you possibly enforce something like this? It goes against what the internet is all about.

Quote:

We welcome links from a third party site to the home page of our Site, through a plain text link, provided that (a) you give Orbitz prior written notice of such link by contacting Orbitz Customer Service, to request Orbitz's permission to establish the link; (b) you discontinue providing a link to our Site if so requested by Orbitz; (c) you do not imply in any fashion that Orbitz is endorsing any of your products or service or is affiliated with you, (d) you do not present Orbitz in a false light, or provide misleading or false information about Orbitz, or its Site or Services, (e) you do not remove or obscure the copyright notices, or other notices on this Site; (f) you do not use any Mark of Orbitz; and (g) you do not replicate, frame or mirror the content of the Site.

We reserve the right to require you to remove links to the Site, in our sole discretion.

Linking to any page of the Site other than to the homepage is strictly prohibited in the absence of a separate linking agreement with Orbitz.

February 14th, 2005, 05:37 PM

gchaney

Mr. Goober Guy ;)

Join Date: Aug 2004

Location: Tampa, Florida

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Personally, I believe I'm going to use a variation of this...with all the page jacking issues and content thiefs it certainly is a clean manner to address quickly any issues related to them.

I just went through a VERY messy situation with 2 specific sites that were page jacking knowingly and flatly refused to respond to request to remove the offending links. There were a total of 5. 2 removed the links voluntarily no questions asked, one site was already shut down by the host.

One has been banned by the host service (that site has been down nearly 4 days and supposedly serves 50K visitors a month) and is still down which creates more potential problems as they are now slandering on other sites. Naturally they fail to mention all the facts. (actually was quite satisfying given the potential damage and malicious intent of the site owner)

The last removed the link only after notice was sent to the host advising of intent to take action.

This type of on site legal notice would simplify the process of getting these unethical linking techniques under control. I won't have to give notice any longer, I can just take action.

Cheers

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