Guidelines for sites linking to MayoClinic.org

By Mayo Clinic Staff

We welcome links to consumer health information content pages on our site, provided the following guidelines are observed.

Links to the MayoClinic.org health information home page

Use text only (for example, www.mayoclinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information). Do not use JavaScript or the site logo. The text below should assist in coding the HTML link to that page. Use a plain text link and paste the block of HTML code provided into the page.

www.mayoclinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information

<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information">MayoClinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information</a>

If you need text to describe the site, please use the following:

Mayo Clinic's award-winning website offers consumer health information and self-improvement tools. Mayo Clinic's medical experts and editorial professionals bring you access to the knowledge and experience of Mayo Clinic for all your consumer health information needs, from cancer, diabetes and heart disease to nutrition, exercise and pregnancy.

Links to interior pages

Links should be text only (for example, http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/basics/definition/con-20032378) and should not use the logo from the site, any images or JavaScript. Use a plain text link and paste the block of HTML code provided into the page.

Please follow the template below to find the proper text for links to interior pages. The template should be filled in using the word describing the health information topic in the URL.

MayoClinic.org ______ Information

For example, to create a link to http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/basics/definition/con-20032378, the text should read:

MayoClinic.org Cancer Information

<a href=http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/basics/definition/con-20032378>MayoClinic.org Cancer Information</a>

General guidelines for linking:

  • URLs for individual pages may change as we update content. Please check your links often to ensure they remain active. If you're not linking to a specific article, we recommend that you link to the disease page that is most relevant to your topic.
  • Re-posting content or images on other websites or framing of MayoClinic.org pages within another website is prohibited. Instead of framing, we encourage you to open MayoClinic.org in a new window. Users have found that approach easy to navigate, and they remain on your site.

To point users to MayoClinic.org and open the results in a new window, the code is:

<a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/" target="mayoclinicwindow">www.MayoClinic.org</a>

  • It is not MayoClinic.org's standard policy to exchange reciprocal links. Requests for reciprocal links are reviewed based on our external links policy. Additional information regarding external links is provided within our product development policy.
  • Links to MayoClinic.org should not appear (through highlighting, for instance) as though the linking site has an overarching relationship with Mayo Clinic.
  • If you wish to link to drug information content on MayoClinic.org, the link must go to the MayoClinic.org Drug Information home page at http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements. Links to individual drug pages are not permitted.
  • Paraphrasing or excerpting MayoClinic.org content is not permitted.

Use of MayoClinic.org RSS feeds

We welcome the use of MayoClinic.org RSS feeds for personal use in a news reader or as part of a noncommercial website or blog. If you post our RSS content links on your website, we ask that you provide proper attribution to "MayoClinic.org" and that you also provide a link to our home page at www.MayoClinic.org as described above under "Links to the MayoClinic.org home page."

Licensing content from MayoClinic.org

For information on hosting MayoClinic.org content for your site, please refer to the MayoClinic.org content licensing program.

July 26, 2018