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Automatic Player Linker

Add your blog to our player newsfeeds

This tool allows you to automatically (via just a single click):

You just need to add our bookmarklet and then click it whenever you want to link to our Sports Reference pages. Javascript bookmarklets are like bookmarks, but slightly different. A bookmark contains an address for a webpage and clicking on it sends you to that page. A bookmarklet is a set of javascript instructions for the browser and when you click on it, your browser runs the javascript. Sometimes this will send you to a different page, but often it may just change what you see on the current page. Ours adds links to players on Sports Reference sites to the articles you are writing.

Note: that due to a request from Google we are now adding nofollow attributes to both the links we put on your pages and also the links that appear from our sites to your site. The links still work, but Google no longer considers them for search result purposes.

Video Explanation of the Process

Sports Reference Linker Launch Blog Post

Add the bookmarklet

create a custom bookmarklet below

Basketball-Reference.com Linker Bookmarklet

To add to your browser you need to do one of the two following things.

  1. (Safari or Firefox) Click on, hold, and then drag the link above to your bookmarks or bookmark bar (works in FireFox or Safari). Note that your bookmark bar must be visible (Toolbars in Firefox or View -> Favorites bar in Safari), or
  2. Right Click on the link above and add to favorites or bookmarks (doesn't work for Chrome). Internet Explorer will ask you if you really want to do this. It asks this for all cases where you create a javascript bookmarklet since there is the possibility of security issues from untrustworthy sites.

  • To make sure you've done it right you can test it with player names. If it doesn't work, you can edit the bookmark url which should appear like the following. Note that there are encoded symbols (necessary for the bookmarklet in some browsers) listed below that may not appear when clicking edit. These are of the form %X or %XX).

    Customize the bookmarklet

    Yes: No:

    Basketball-Reference.com Linker Bookmarklet

    To add to your browser, see instructions above.

    To make sure you've done it right, if you edit the bookmark, the url should appear like the following. Note that there are encoded symbols (necessary for the bookmarklet in some browsers) listed below that may not appear when clicking edit. These are of the form %X or %XX).

    How to use this with blogs or bulletin boards

    See a list of supported blog software below.

    PLEASE SAVE ANY WORK prior to using the bookmarklet. While we have made a serious effort to never lose any of your content, we can not make any guarantees.

    Generally, the easiest way to use the tool is to just write up your post in the blog text box and click the bookmarklet in your brower. The tool grabs the text you wrote, runs it through our player linker and returns the text with links enclosed.

    When using with blogs or bulletin boards for adding links to posts while composing, you must click the bookmarklet while using the "Edit Html" or "Html" view rather than the "Visual", "Rich Text", or "Compose" View. You can switch back and forth from the two views, so you can write in the Visual view, switch to the HTML view and click the bookmarklet.

      Steps
    1. Save your draft
    2. Change into HTML view if needed
    3. Click the linker bookmarklet
    4. A Working notice should appear, and when it disappears all of the player names should be linked.
    Test the bookmarklet here

    How to use on a webpage

    If you select text on a webpage, like in an article at MLB.com or ESPN, it will replace the player names in the article with a link to their www.basketball-reference.com page.
      Steps
    1. Select text you want to add links to.
    2. Click on linker bookmarklet
    3. A Working notice should appear and when it disappears all of the player names should be linked.
    Test text selection here

    Currently Supported Webpages and Software

    • WordPress
    • TypePad
    • Joomla
    • MovableType Enterprise 4 (may also work in 5, but have not tested)
    • phpBB
    • invision
    • vBulletin
    • General webpage text (can't be done for an entire page, but just for a partial selection of the page)
    • Request support for other software

    Notes

    • Currently, the scripts only looks at players who played in 2006 or later.
    • Names inside of links will be matched as well, to avoid this write something like "Bill Russell" with two spaces rather than "Bill  Russell" with one space. It will render the same way in HTML since extra spaces are collapsed by default.
    • Player names will be bolded and linked automatically.
    • Names with multiple associated players will go to the search engine results for that name or to the common choice for that name.
    • Search is by longest names to shortest names
    • No matching will occur across hard line returns.
    • A name with a </a> after it will not be matched, so it won't overwrite existing links.