Meta links?

[Poppy Design]

Hello

I just wondered if anybody knew what the term "meta links" mean?
Obviously as a designer I am familar with meta tags but not quite sure what meta links refer to!
Anybody have any ideas?

thanks
J

[Carl-CSNM]

Metalinks sites are sites where someone has collected numerous web addresses and organised them under specific headings I think. :D

[mattk]

Doesn't Wordpress use the term to describe links within your blog?

[bwglaw]

I think they are hyperlinks for specific keywords on your site.

[mattk]

I think we have conclusively proved that it's a made up term which doesn't really refer to anything!

[compuclean]

From Wikipedia - of course, this could be highly irrelevant :)

Metalink

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Jump to: navigation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#column-one), search (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink#searchInput)
Metalinkhttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/45/Metalink_logo.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Metalink_logo.png)File extension (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filename_extension):.metalinkMIME type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME):application/metalink+xmlType of format:File distributionExtended from:XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML)Metalink is an Open Standard/Framework for programs that download (Download Managers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Manager), BitTorrent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent) clients, Web browsers, FTP clients, & P2P (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2P) programs). For increased convenience, it stores the many locations of files (FTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_transfer_protocol)/HTTP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP)/P2P (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2P)) in a single file (a .metalink) so chunks/segments of each file can be downloaded from multiple resources at the same time (known as accelerated/multi-threaded/segmented downloading (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_downloading)). If you have a fast Internet connection, this usually results in a more reliable and much faster download than a typical single segment download from one server. Other features include automatic checksum comparison of finished downloads, and automatic OS/language selection. Metalinks are also backwards compatible with regular hyperlinks by using the format http://URL#!metalink3!http://URLtoMetalink (http://url/#!metalink3!http://URLtoMetalink).
Metalink is extensible, and supports listing MD5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5) & SHA-1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1) checksums along with PGP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP) signatures. Besides FTP and HTTP Mirror (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_%28computing%29) locations and rsync (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync), it also supports listing these P2P methods: BitTorrent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent), ed2k (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed2k), and Magnet Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_Link).

[Poppy Design]

Yes sounds like it!!!

Client has given me a website page plan, which is straightforward and the "Meta Links" seems to be just a main section with subsections within. Cannot see anything specific or special about these sections.

Just thought I'd check here first as it probably would not look too good, if I, as the designer, have to ask the client what a "meta link" is?!!

thanks

I think we have conclusively proved that it's a made up term which doesn't really refer to anything!

[dan_moore]

You could always just ask the client what they mean :) It sounds like they might just mean links within a page rather than external to a page.

In general 'meta' means 'information about', so a meta link would be information or data about a link, rather than a link itself.

[pdecaux]

Don't you just love jargon designed to confuse a client?

Breaking it down, meta links must be "links relating to other links" or some such definition. My only concept of what this might possibly be would be be a link to a links page!

Perhaps they are referring to the loading of links with keyphrases to boost your page rank?

As Dan said, you need to ask them what they mean. Also check on their website/advertising whether they are offer a jargon-free service :D !

[PatrickH]

Not sure why your client calls them metalinks: these are links about links used by high volume sites linking to distributed files. Is it really about a site map?