# Automatic hyperlinking

> Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Automatic_hyperlinking
> Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Automatic_hyperlinking.md
> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_hyperlinking
> Source revision: 1356198515
> License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Software feature

An **autolink** is a [hyperlink](/source/Hyperlink) added automatically to a [hypermedia](/source/Hypermedia) document, after it has been authored or [published](/source/Published). **Automatic hyperlinking** describes the process or the software feature that produces autolinks. Segments of the hypermedia are identified through a process of [pattern matching](/source/Pattern_matching). For example, in hypertext, the software could recognise textual patterns for street addresses, phone numbers, [ISBNs](/source/ISBN), or [URLs](/source/Uniform_Resource_Locator).

In a distributed hypermedia system, such as the [World Wide Web](/source/World_Wide_Web), autolinking can be carried out by client or server software. For example, a [web server](/source/Web_server) could add links to a web page as it sends it to a web browser. A browser can also add links to a page after it has received it from the server.

## Examples

### Google Toolbar

AutoLink was a feature of the [Google Toolbar](/source/Google_Toolbar). Users could convert street addresses or [ISBNs](/source/ISBN) in a web page in their browser to links by clicking a button on Google Toolbar. The links directed the users to Google Maps for street addresses and [Amazon](/source/Amazon_(company)).com for book information.[1]

Since it was introduced in February 2005, there has been a lot of controversy about this feature. Some [webmasters](/source/Webmaster) expressed their concerns over the AutoLink feature claiming that Google had no rights to modify their webpages or to direct the users to a commercial website such as Amazon.

This caused [Barnes & Noble](/source/Barnes_%26_Noble), a competitor of [Amazon](/source/Amazon.com), to link all ISBNs on their site back to themselves to prevent people clicking them to take them to their competitor.

Google sceptics compare it with [Microsoft](/source/Microsoft)'s unpopular [SmartTags](/source/Smart_tag_(Microsoft)), which ultimately proved too controversial and were dropped.[2]

### Trac Wiki Engine

[Trac](/source/Trac) is a [web application](/source/Web_application) for [issue tracking](/source/Issue_tracking_system) in software development. It has a [wiki engine](/source/Wiki_software) which is used for all text and documentation in the system. This includes not only wiki pages but also tickets and check-in log messages. These pieces of text have AutoLinks created, for example the text **ticket:1** links to ticket 1. This is an example of server-side AutoLinking.[3][4][5]

### AutoLinker

AutoLinker is a [plugin](/source/Plug-in_(computing)) application which has been developed for [vBulletin](/source/VBulletin) forum software. It allows [keywords](/source/Index_term) set by the board [administrator](/source/Internet_forum) to be turned into hyperlinks or popups automatically any time they are used in a forum post or message.[6]

### Tomboy Notes

[Tomboy Notes](/source/Tomboy_Notes) is a [personal wiki](/source/Personal_wiki) and text editor for Linux that creates automatic hyperlinks for web and [email addresses](/source/Email_address) while the text is being edited.[7]

### Moodle

The [moodle](/source/Moodle) online course platform uses autolinking for automatic linking of terms within a moodle site to a [glossary](/source/Glossary) or database entries, or to resources within the same course.[8]

### Saga

Saga is a note-taking application that creates automatic links between notes. The application recognizes page titles and headings and automatically creates links to them when they are mentioned inside notes. By using autolinks users can quickly create connected knowledge bases. [9]

### InLinks

InLinks is an online software that automates internal linking between web pages by utilizing a named entity detection algorithm to establish connections between pages containing similar entities. [10]

## See also

- [Entity linking](/source/Entity_linking)

- [Named entity recognition](/source/Named_entity_recognition)

- [tf–idf](/source/Tf%E2%80%93idf)

- [Autocomplete](/source/Autocomplete)

- [Code folding](/source/Code_folding)

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** ["Google Toolbar Help"](https://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/static.py?page=features.html).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["Google AutoLink: Enemy of the people?"](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/03/google_autolink/).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** ["Trac Wiki Engine"](http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracWiki).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["Backlinks Kaufen"](https://www.rocket-backlinks.com/de/).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** ["Trac Links"](http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracLinks).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-6)** ["Autolinker.com"](https://web.archive.org/web/20180805011815/http://autolinker.com/). Archived from [the original](http://www.autolinker.com) on 2018-08-05. Retrieved 2020-06-24.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-7)** ["Tomboy in Gnome wiki"](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** ["Auto-linking"](https://docs.moodle.org/33/en/Autolinking). *MoodleDocs*. 2017-05-31. Retrieved 2017-10-06.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** ["Saga.so"](https://saga.so).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-10)** ["inlinks.com"](https://inlinks.com).

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Automatic hyperlinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_hyperlinking) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_hyperlinking?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.