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Revisiting :Visited(joelcalifa.com)

almost 7 years ago from Joel Califa, Senior Product Designer at GitHub

  • Travis VocinoTravis Vocino, almost 7 years ago (edited almost 7 years ago )

    You answered your question with this:

    "I really want to click on this cat, but now I know better."

    This is by far the primary reason for the disappearance of visited links. In your example from Buzzfeed, your :visited link styles prevented you from clicking down that trail—thus preventing Buzzfeed from generating revenue from that impression.

    The removal of :visited from anything but navigation type areas is a business decision, not so much aesthetics.

    0 points
    • Joel CalifaJoel Califa, almost 7 years ago

      It's funny, I originally had a paragraph about this in one of my drafts but thought better of it. Felt too bait-y and there's no evidence content sites are any more intentional about this than any other site. I'll post it here though:

      "On content sites such as BuzzFeed, unstyled visited links cause more users to accidentally return to previously visited pages, to see more ads, and to possibly increase the company’s bottom line (depending on how ads are sold, of course. BuzzFeed is just an example.) In fact, scatter-brained as they are, people are probably even more likely to click on a link they’ve already demonstrated interest in rather than a new one. Considering the amount of sites that have neglected :visited CSS, I’m going to assume this was not done on purpose. But in the cases where it is — and I’m sure there are — where do we draw the line? Is this too small a deception to be considered a dark pattern?"

      1 point