Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context

This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style.

It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page.

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Only make links that are relevant to the context.

It is not useful and can be very distracting to mark all possible words as hyperlinks. This practice is known as "overlinking." ^[1] Links should add to the user's experience; they should not detract from it by making the article harder to read. A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that readers are likely to want to follow. Redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. A link is analogous to a cross-reference in a print medium. Imagine if every second word in an encyclopedia article were followed by '(see:)'. Hence, the links should not be so numerous as to make the article harder to read.

It's not always an easy call. Linking to the number three from triangle may be helpful, while linking to the number six from Six O'Clock News would be wrong.

This page is in dynamic tension with the general rule to build the web. See the talk page for additional considerations.

What generally should not be linked

In general, do not create links to:

Plain English words.
Subsidiary topics that result in red links (links that go nowhere) to articles that will never be created, such as the names of book chapters.
The same link multiple times, because redundant links clutter up the page and make future maintenance harder. However, do link the first occurrence of a term, and always link when directing to a page for more information, e.g. "Relevant background can be found in Fourier series". It is not uncommon to repeat a link that had last appeared much earlier in the article, but there's hardly ever a reason to link the same term twice in the same section.
Individual words when a phrase has its own article. For example, link to "the flag of Tokelau" instead of "the flag of Tokelau". Such a link is more likely to be interesting and helpful to the user, and almost certainly contains links to the more general terms, in this case, "flag" and "Tokelau".
A page that redirects back to the first page. These circular redirects are frustrating to readers

What generally should be linked

In general, do create links to:

Major connections with the subject of another article that will help readers to understand the current article more fully (see the example below). This can include people, events and topics that already have an article or that clearly deserve one, as long as the link is relevant to the article in question.
Technical terms, unless they are fully defined in the article and do not have their own separate article. Sometimes the most appropriate link is an interwiki link to Wiktionary.

Other considerations

Link density

Aim for a consistent link density. Don't link eight words in one sentence and then none in the rest of the article. However, the opening of the article is typically more densely linked than the rest, because many items will appear there for the first time. Excessive links make an article difficult to read. For example, see this archival version of Mean Red Spiders.

Subsections

In general, try not to link to subsections, as the reader will arrive mid-article without context. However, sometimes there is a relevant discussion in a subsection that should be linked to. The format for a subsection link is [[Article#Section|name of link]]. For example, to link to the "Culture" subsection of the Oman article, type [[Oman#Culture|culture of Oman]]. When you name a piped link, think about what the reader will believe the link is about; in this example, the piped section-link should not be named "Oman", because the reader will think that link goes to the general article on Oman.

Quotations

Do not link or update the formatting of dates inside quotations.

Dates

Because of the date preference formatting MediaWiki software feature, "how" to link and "when" to link dates can not be treated independently one from the other. Unrelated to that software issue, there is no general consensus that the habit of linking separate years (that are date indications that only consist of a "year") should be abandoned, although most Wikipedians disfavour that habit currently.

Details about when and how to link years can be found in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Dates. An overview of the most frequently occuring cases:

Dates when they contain a day, month, and year — [[25 March]] [[2004]] — or day and month — [[February 10]] — should be linked for date preference formatting.
Stand alone months and days of the week should generally not be linked.
Stand alone years do not need to be linked but some users prefer it, and some users prefer to link (with a piped link) to articles formatted as "year in subject" such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in United States history.
Dates in section headers should generally not be linked.
Do not link dates inside quotations.

Example

In the article on Supply and demand, you should:

almost certainly link microeconomic theory and general equilibrium as these are technical terms that many readers are unlikely to understand at first sight;
consider linking price and goods, which, although common words, have technical dimensions that are relevant to the article and that link to explanations that are specifically in relation to supply and demand;
probably not link to the "United States" because that is a very large article with no particular connection to supply and demand.
definitely not link "potato", because it is a common term with no particular relationship to the article on Supply and demand, beyond its arbitrary use as an example of traded goods in that article.

Example of overlinking

An extreme example of overlinking can be found at an old version of the article on Hyperlinks.

Issues covered elsewhere

Titles

"As a general rule, do not put links in the bold reiteration of the title in the article's lead sentence or any section title." (from Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles)

Disambiguation pages

"Don't wikilink any other words in the line, unless they may be essential to help the reader determine where they might find the information." (from Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Individual entries)

References

^ Dvorak, John C. (April 2002). "Missing Links". PC Magazine.