What an amazing mini-case study here. Really good point regarding news and links. Generally in newspapers you don't read part of an article, move to another one, and then to another one similarly to how a hyperlinked article is laid out.
This is one of the main reasons Google is moving towards a focus on mobile usability. One of their biggest warnings I see site owners get slammed for is "links too close together" and this is a great example of that.
>Generally in newspapers you don't read part of an article, move to another one, and then to another one...
I actually do this more when reading a physical newspaper than reading newspapers online. With several articles laid out on the same physical page and articles jumping from one page to another mid-article, I read articles uninterrupted beginning to end much less frequently than when reading on the typical newspaper website. Or am I misunderstanding what you'er saying here?
News blogs have started to out and out change the subject by putting a break in the article and then a "SEE ALSO:" link to a completely different story which may or may not be related but probably won't cause you to understand the current story any better. It's very distracting and is also very self-serving as they are just trying to get more page views out of you.
This is one of the main reasons Google is moving towards a focus on mobile usability. One of their biggest warnings I see site owners get slammed for is "links too close together" and this is a great example of that.