I think it’s a pretty good way to get the design/development on there without screwing with the design :) I add them to all my sites now.

You’re totally right about how nice it is to find out who designed a site if you liked it, I’ve done this many times before. this would make me inclined to post it, but I still feel its bad practice. would be nice if you could attach this info to Alexa or Compete or a who is search. seems like that would be the appropriate place.

:)

More often I find, it depends on what the client wants – just like Brian has concluded – I’ve had some clients who WANT me to put a link up there. Some, don’t say anything about it and it doesn’t go up there. Or even still, some are pro-bono sites for organizations and once you’ve up and left that institution, there should be some message some place about who to contact should the site need updating even if officers change. i.e. website management changes with the officers but perhaps someone has a question about the design or wants to change something and would like to ask approval etc in the future…

99% of my clientele is due to referrals even though not all my sites have attribution links. And yes, I do agree that if you do a great job, word-of-mouth client referral is much more powerful than an attribution link!

My meat-and-potatoes question about attribution links, however, is more for finding out whether or not there’s some go around for finding out who designed the site in the first place without having to PUT an attribution on there! Meaning, there are plenty of sites that I stumble upon that I’m loving the design and immediately scroll the length of the site to find the attribution link or some form of contact – only to find none. So, I sit and marvel but can’t figure out who in the world designed it. And, googling “designer for xyz site” doesn’t always produce the desired results….and! there are way too many designers out there to creatively think of one in your head to google search…

Thoughts?

Thank you!!

1) I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a footer saying “web development by SuperDuper” If the site is for a small club, I can see this not being a big deal, but the context we are discussing is for paying clients, regardless if they are low profile or gargantuan corporations, they both deserve the best.

2) Search rank and everything involved is a huge topic, but the gist of it is that links out of a page pass their page rank to the sites they link to.

3)I don’t view the link as a referral, perhaps an unsolicited one, but I would say the link is definitely more of an advertisement than a referral, yes?