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I have worked on a few blogs for several years and have treated them as a creative outlet. Haven't been concerned about getting followers or traffic.

Presently, the "Blogroll" section of my blog is empty. However, I am now considering adding several URLs to this section. I don't plan to follow these other blogs everyday; I want to treat this section of my blog as a convenient online bookmarking service for myself (instead of saving a collection of links in, say, a text file).

I am now wondering, by linking to another person's blog, do they automatically receive notification that somebody has linked to them? Or does that only happen if I subscribe to their RSS feed?

I don't expect the other bloggers to link to me, but it would be a nice bonus. And I don't plan to initiate contact with the other bloggers to make a link-back request.

So ... my question is: does having a Blogroll result in any benefits to a blogger, other than creating a convenient collection of links, so that everything is one click away?

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A compact checklist for that expands on 's points and turns a plain blogroll into something useful (without chasing followers).

A blogroll is fine as a personal bookmark, but treat it as a curated feature for readers too: keep it focused, annotate each link with one line explaining why it is listed, prefer linking to a specific helpful post rather than a homepage, and remove dead or low-value links periodically. Curated lists are more likely to generate clicks and real reader attention than a long “link dump.”

Control what you pass to search engines and visitors by qualifying links. Use editorial (default) links for genuine recommendations, rel="sponsored" for paid or affiliate placements, and rel="ugc" for community-sourced entries. Open external sites safely with target="_blank" plus rel="noopener" (or noreferrer) to avoid tab-hijacking. Example:

<!-- editorial -->
<a href="https://example.com/article" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Useful article</a>

<!-- sponsored -->
<a href="https://sponsor.example.com" rel="sponsored noopener" target="_blank">Sponsor</a>

<!-- user-generated -->
<a href="https://forum.example.com/thread" rel="ugc">Forum thread</a>

(See Google guidance on qualifying outbound links: Qualify Outbound Links. For the noopener explanation see MDN: rel=noopener.)

If you want the linked blogs to notice, linking from a post (not just a sidebar) and mentioning them on social gives far better visibility; WordPress-style pingbacks/trackbacks exist but are often disabled or treated as spam — more detail here: Trackbacks and Pingbacks. Measure real benefit with outbound-click events or (if you must) UTM-tagged links, but prefer event tracking so you preserve referrer data.

A final caution: avoid systematic link swaps or “link exchange” schemes. A few natural mutual links are fine, but excessive reciprocal linking or paying for links without labeling them can lead to penalties — see Google’s guidance on link spam and tagging paid links: Link spam and qualifying links.

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I am now wondering, by linking to another person's blog, do they automatically receive notification that somebody has linked to them?

No, they don't, but if they happen to be using Google Webmaster Tools, they can figure out who links to them.

Or does that only happen if I subscribe to their RSS feed?

Unless they are using Feedburner, they typically don't know if people are subscribing to their RSS feeds.

So ... my question is: does having a Blogroll result in any benefits to a blogger, other than creating a convenient collection of links, so that everything is one click away?

The benefit to you is that you have your links conveniently there. The benefit to your readers is that they can see what other blogs you find interesting, and give them something else to explore. The benefit to the owner of the blog you're linking to is that they may receive some traffic from your readers, and there is a little search engine optimization benefit in that your link to them is considered by Google as an endorsement of sorts. The concept behind Google's search algorithm is that when sites link to each other, they are "endorsing" the other site. The more links, and the higher quality and bigger the sites giving the endorsement are, the higher the recipient sites will rank.

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