A pleasant way of getting the desired result.

During the time I was working on this column I was also involved in other, more lucrative (or at least mandatory), tasks. One of my work related activities led to a Google search (they often do) that brought up some interesting results. One of these was a reference to a web page that caught my interest, and I of course clicked over to it. At the bottom of the page I noticed an interesting sentence:

Since you got here from a search engine, external link, or by typing the URL in your browser, please go to the First Look Home Page to properly view the rest of the site.

In other words, the web site I was visiting was able to identify that I had gotten to that deeply linked page on the site from an outside source - via a number of possible routes. They didn't tell me that I shouldn't have reached that page in such a manner, but should instead have entered only via the front door. Instead, they accepted (and identified) the fact that I'd arrived from somewhere else, and politely suggested that viewing their front page would be a worthwhile activity for me.

After such a pleasant request I couldn't refuse. It with an excellent case of manners and technology working together to solve a problem without having to go to court.

Go to: More than enough to keep the courts busy, or
Go to: How Deep is My Linking?