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At "BNB Choices", we don't charge extra for linking to your web site, however, we do have guidelines for accepting or denying a link to an innkeeper's personal web site.

Our guidelines are objective and fair. Although our guidelines may seem strict, they are in fact just reasonable guidelines. We have these guidelines to ensure B&B users get the best Internet experience possible.

Here are our guidelines for:

Multiple Web Pages:

We don't link to more than one web site. Internet users do not want to keep surfing to get information. Hence, we only link to one external web page.

Virtual Domains

A virtual domain is any web site that has the format of
www.your-name.com

In most situations, we happily link to a virtual domain, however, we may decide not to link if your web page is all graphical. This means that even your text is an image. The problem we have with web sites made solely with images is that they take an excessive amount of time to download.

Since waiting for a page to download can be extremely frustrating, we want to remove any frustrations that users of our web site experience.

Other factors that may prevent a link being made to a virtual domain includes the excessive use of Flash Technology, Java Applets and music. All of these features create an excessive amount of download time and can by annoying to the user.

We won't link to your web site if you use JavaScript that prevents a user from easily getting back to bnbchoices.com when hitting the back button.

Since most Internet users find pop-up banners annoying, we may also deny a link if your web page has pop-up banners that promote or advertise something. We don't mind advertising on the web page, but a site containing pop-up banners are generally not accepted.

These are the primary guidelines we follow, however, each web page is subject to review.

Overall, 99% of virtual domains are linked to.

Non-Virtual Domains

A non-virtual domain is any web site that has the format of
www.my-name.com/your-name
or
www.your-name.my-name.com

All of the guidelines that apply to the virtual domains also apply to non-virtual domains. In addition, non-virtual domains are subject to other guidelines.

One the biggest problems with non-virtual domains is that these links easily go dead. Since dead links are extremely annoying, we hesitate to link to a non-virtual domain because we don't want dead links on our web site.

We don't link to a non-virtual domain just because it exists. There needs to be a benefit to users of our web site. So when reviewing a non-virtual domain, the one question we ask is...
Does this web page provide more information than what our listing provides? If the answer is yes, then we may link. If the answer is no, then we definitely do not link.

If the benefit of extra information is there, then we will usually take the risk of linking to a non-virtual domain and do what we can to make sure the link never dies.

The chances of us linking to a free web page such as Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire and other free web page services is slim. The quality and download time, combined with the pop-up ads these sites generate are not usually worth the link. However, we still review and consider the link.

Hypermart web pages are another example of a web page we may not link to due to the annoying number of pop-up ads that are created. There are other web page hosting sources that behave in a similar manner to Hypermart pages and they too are under the same scrutiny.

Our primary concern is to serve the B&B users wholeheartedly. By making objective and fair decisions, we help the B&B user get the best Internet experience possible by eliminating common frustrations.

Overall, approximately 10% of non-virtual domains are linked to.

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