Circumventing the Link-Blocking

Ahhh, I see that Glenn Greenwald has attained the position of being a sufficient nuisance to right-wing blogs that the more odious of them are doing the good old "linkage blocking" trick. In this case, Greenwald wades into the cesspool that is Little Green Footballs, and apparently has his link redirected. Well, as I posted last September, there's a simple enough way around that, if liberal bloggers really want to link something in the fetid swampland of Far Right Blogistan:

But anyway, it doesn't matter, because there's an easy way for us liberal bloggers to get around this, and as a service to my fine liberal brethren, here's how it works. Instead of using the URL to the right-wing blog post in question when creating your link, first take this string:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=

Then, you simply append the post URL to the end, immediately after the equal-sign. So, if you're going to link Byzantium's Shores, instead of linking this URL:

http://byzantiumshores.blogspot.com

...you'll actually link this URL:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://byzantiumshores.blogspot.com

What you've just done is create a redirect through Google, which according to my brief experimentation with SiteMeter and this blog, shows up as a hit but one with an unknown referring URL. Likewise, I doubt Technorati would pick it up as a link. And besides, no blogger is going to be insane enough as to block referrals from Google, right?

So there you go, liberal bloggers -- break free of the traffic-blocking shackles! Link whomever you desire!

Never hurts to revisit the basic techniques, folks.