Engadget is a site that I visit on and off for a quick ‘taste’ of the latest tech news. And to that end, it suffices for that. But I refuse to visit that site on a regular basis for one simple reason.

Let’s take a typical story on Engadget (no links to them from here! After you read this, you’ll understand). This story is about Cybook Gen3 e-book reader.

I read the story on the first page, and was looking for a link to the website (didn’t think to check the image!) so I checked the other links in the article: 2 were for links to other pages on Engadget, and one was for the reader who submitted the article.

So I clicked on the most likely one. That took me to another page with two links on it, each of them was for more pages in Engadget. In other words, I got further and further away from what I was looking for and that was a link to Cybook.

In frustration, I write clicked after highlighting the term, then selected Google search. Boom I was there quickly. So I found the answer to my search, but not the answer to a more basic question: Why does Engagdet make linking to other sites less than obvious?

Engagdet does not include links to websites in the body of the story at all. Links to other sites are either image links, or after the end of the story.

This is most definitely one of my pet hates, and something that Google didn’t intend. I wonder why Engadget does this. Any suggestions? It’s definitely not reader friendly.