All mobile practitioners should know: What exactly is deep linking?

In recent years, as startups have used, improved, and explored deep links, deep links have become a hot topic in the mobile Internet . Almost all platform companies have set their sights on deep linking and have invested a lot of R&D resources in order to gain the initiative in deep linking standards or in-app search. So, what are these hot deep links and where do they come from?

What is deep linking

Simply put, deep linking allows users to bypass the homepage of a website or mobile app and directly access its content page. For example, a link from the Baidu index page can directly jump to JD.com's product page instead of JD.com's homepage. This kind of jump can be achieved on the Web through URLs, but the mobile side is not as smooth as the Web side. Due to industry development and technical architecture issues, it is very difficult to jump directly from one App to another App's content page, which involves technical and commercial issues.

Controversial deep linking

The concept of deep linking has actually been proposed very early. In 2006, deep linking first became the focus of media attention. At that time, this technology was mainly used to increase the number of sub-pages indexed by Google (or other search engines) other than the homepage of the website, so as to achieve the purpose of increasing website traffic.

At the same time, deep links are also used as hotlinks. The so-called hotlinks can directly link to files uploaded by third parties and then download them. This situation caused a lot of controversy for deep links at the time, because the act of directly downloading files from the Internet through hotlinks was suspected of infringing copyright.

Based on the above, many courts in the United States have ruled that linking to content pages within a website is an infringement, especially if the deep link to the content page generates revenue through advertising. The opposition to deep linking was a real threat to the openness and inclusiveness of the internet in 2006, just as the opposition to net neutrality was in 2014.

The emergence of mobile apps

There is nothing wrong with the technology itself. Although it involves copyright disputes, deep linking does solve many problems of information transmission.

In 2008, Apple released the iPhone iOS 2 system and the iOS SDK accordingly. For the first time ever, developers can develop Apple mobile apps and automatically upload them to the Appstore. The "sandbox mechanism" of mobile applications is different from that of web pages, and its file structure is not based on that of the Web side. So even though iOS 2 already supports simple deep links technically, it is still very difficult to jump to the specific content page of the App from channels outside the App. At this time, the application structure and the relationship between functions and features are unclear. But this was not a big problem for developers, because at that time, the mobile Internet ecosystem was just starting out, applications were still very basic, the trend of mobile commercialization had not yet appeared, and the actual application of deep links was also very small.

Mobile deep linking apps

In the early years, deep linking was used on iOS mobile terminals to map web content to the App, solving the problem of user experience interruption from web to mobile terminals. For example, when you are viewing a piece of news on the web and want to continue reading in the App, deep links can help you accomplish this. This means deep linking is very useful for apps with a lot of content. If an app only has two or three functions or content pages, the cost of selection for a user is very low. However, if an app has more than a thousand options, the value brought by deep links is huge, because you can go directly to the content page from anywhere without having to enter the app and search. Therefore, deep links first served apps with a large amount of content.

In 2012, Google proposed the mainstream application of deep links on mobile devices, which can access content pages in Google applications from other applications through deep links. This is the first case of inter-app jumps based on deep links, demonstrating the huge benefits of seamless jumps between apps.

In 2013-2014, the mobileization of e-commerce began to explode, and consumers began to shop on mobile devices, which quickly reached a large scale. Brands have invested heavily in the development of mobile applications to increase sales . The final results proved that the transaction volume of the mobile App soon surpassed that of the mobile Wap page, and the investment in the mobile terminal achieved a very good return. However, there is a problem: there is no good way to direct users from traditional channels (such as email, text messages, and web ads) into the app.

Deep links have created tremendous value in helping brands improve user experience, intelligently guide users to place orders, and create more interactions. However, this has also brought about a big problem. That is, if there is no unified standard to regulate the creation and jump of deep links, then it will not be easy to jump to each other through deep links?

Common standards

Just like communication between people, we need a common language, such as Chinese. Similarly, if we want to achieve seamless jumps between apps through deep links, we need a common standard. In this way, the deep links we create according to this standard can be used across apps.

The industry still needs a unified standard to create and identify deep links. Therefore, many companies have invested their efforts in promoting the standardization of deep links in the mobile Internet to form a common standard within the industry, so as to better promote the development of the industry and optimize the user experience.

The future of deep linking

Deep linking is an easy way to bring users to your app content from anywhere. This technology will bring great convenience and value to the mobile Internet.

• First of all, this technology will greatly improve the user experience. For example, if I am reading H5 content of some news and information apps on WeChat, if I want to view or participate in the comments at this time, I must enter the app to complete this action. From the current situation, in most cases we can only jump to the App homepage after clicking a link, but cannot jump to the content page we are viewing. Deep linking can solve this problem, and it can significantly improve the user experience.
• Secondly, traffic from different channels can be directed to the App to improve data conversion. Whether it is SMS marketing, email marketing or social marketing , it is no longer an invalid link for users, but can directly reach their destination page. In this way, the traffic originally belonging to the App can be returned to the App, thereby facilitating the completion of transactions.
• Third, for the entire mobile Internet, achieving connectivity between apps can greatly improve people’s lives in the mobile Internet era and promote the efficiency of the entire society. In fact, if apps can be connected, we can easily think of many scenarios, such as O2O travel scenarios. After searching for a restaurant on Dianping, you can call a taxi seamlessly through deep linking, rather than exiting Dianping and launching the taxi app from the mobile desktop , which greatly improves efficiency and makes mobile life more convenient.

Based on the above, it can be predicted that deep links will be widely used and eventually become an important link in mobile life.