
Ask HN: Why don't we indicate internal vs. external links? - nealrs
Hypertext is great - but how come we don&#x27;t (in general) indicate whether links are internal or external? Sure, you can mouseover a link and check the status bar at the bottom - but that&#x27;s not very obvious for your average user.<p>Why not visually indicate whether a link is internal &#x2F; external with a glyph (::after) or a separate color (maybe orange instead of standard blue?)<p>Is anyone out there doing something like this? Do you think it&#x27;d improve the web experience?
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detaro
Some sites do that (wikis being a common example), I personally never found it
all that useful.

What benefit do you see from such an indicator?

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nealrs
Maybe it's a change in functionality? (new tab vs. new window) or perhaps it
affects people's behavior (oh, this is another page on this site - so i won't
be leaving / going somewhere else with potentially harmful info)

i don't have a concrete use case yet - but it seems like in a world rife with
phishing / bad news / SEO blackhats - knowing if a link is external / internal
could be useful.

