A SitePoint blogger recently wrote about uTag. Like my favorite, snurl, it’s one of many make-a-shorter-link URL redirect services, but with a 90’s twist! When you click on these, instead of getting a page, you get a frameset with ads on top, broken addressbar usability, and, if you know how uTag works, the warm fuzzies that the jerk who put you through this annoyance got ad revenue while the site they deemed worth linking to doesn’t even get PageRank credit for the inbound link. The best part is that uTag encourages site owners to replace all their links with crappy uTag links, so when uTag folds your site can add to the collective link rot. Also, if more site owners do this, browsing their sites starts to look like this:

Tip: Unless you’re as established as about.com (hated for this practice), you probably can’t get away with annoying users this thoroughly.

Site owners, it may be time to dust off this snippet:

if (top !== self) top.location.replace(document.location.href);