Link building with AddThis URL
-
We've begun using AddThis for tracking our social sharing. AddThis has been adding the snippet to the end of the URLs on our pages and we've been finding that people linking to us are linking to the URL with the snippet. AddThis says this isn't a problem for SEO. Is this correct?
Here is an example:
I want to make sure this is not affecting our SEO in any way, particularly that Google would see this as an affiliate or paid link since it has the "#". I may be crazy but I just want to make sure!
-
Mike, this comment you made is correct:
"my understanding is that Google disregards everything after the "#" so there shouldn't be a duplicate content issue."
If you do somehow see one of these getting indexed in Google then you have an issue, but I have not seen this happen.
-
Quick correction here. ? indicates a URL parameter, # indicates a subsection of the same document.
-
These special codes after the URL are the parameters that are used to track the user’s information. I personally don’t think there should be a SEO problem with this and links that you received on the Add this version of URL will still be counted to the main domain.
Hope this helps!
-
I believe that Googlebot doesn't look at anything in the URL after a #, so you should be fine. Check out this from trusted Google engineer John Mu, or this. You should be fine in terms of duplicate content, and I don't see why Google would associate this as an affiliate or paid link or anything like that.
-
In Google webmaster Tools there is a "Structured Data Testing Tool", which, although the purpose of it is for rich snippets and microdata, it looks like it can be used to see if Google recognizes the url with the ADDTHIS snippet as still being valid with authorship linked to a Google Plus account.
I pasted your extended url with snippets into the test window, clicked Preview, and it seems to show up fine in their test results.
This may indicate that as as long as Google recognizes the url as being connected to authorship with a Google Plus account, then they would not penalize it because of the added AddThis snippet. Also, AddThis has a 100 domain authority in open site explorer, and there is a tracking link in the script to their site.
<script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-52b47a3152487f9b">script>
I would guess that there is a possibility that if Google's algorhithm recognized their domain as a trusted domain with strong authority, then that would also be helpful to avoid any SEO penalties. (Open Site Explorer shows addthis.com having a 100 domain authority!).
-
Eric, I'm really confused. AddThis automatically adds a tracking code each time the page is loaded. If you click refresh you'll notice that the code changes.
What do you mean the URL isn't being indexed? Google is ranking that page for the keyword. And I might be mistaken but my understanding is that Google disregards everything after the "#" so there shouldn't be a duplicate content issue.
-
Mike, the only way that you can be certain that it's not affecting SEO in any way is to not use it. That said, you have to look at the potential drawbacks from using it. Is the article being shared enough via addthis to get natural links without those extra characters in the URL? Probably not.
I also looked at the URL and see that Google isn't indexing that URL. Therefore, I don't recommend using addthis just for that reason. You should be building links and social shares to the main URL, not another URL. If that other URL (the one you posted above) actually redirected to the main URL, that would be one thing: but it doesn't. You're just feeding and creating duplicate content (not a good thing).
-
Not familiar with AddThis, but as long as your URL's remain the same if you stop using AddThis, you should be okay! If your URLs change, it could be an issue
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URL Structure
I'm going through the process of redesigning our website, and the URL structure was brought up. We currently have our URLs structured as domain.com/keyword. It seems that some people think setting your URLs up to look like: domain.com/directory/keyword makes more sense from a user's perspective, and from a search engine's perspective. With our directories labeled as services, solutions, clients - I see no value in adding directories as it dilutes the keyword and brings the keyword further away from the domain. Are there situations where adding a directory before the page in the URL makes sense? If anyone has data showing the difference between the two that'd be great! Thanks, Brian
Technical SEO | | PrasoonGoel0 -
Links in Webmaster Tools that aren't really linking to us
I've noticed that there is a domain in WMT that Google says is linking to our domain from 173 different pages, but it actually isn't linking to us at all on ANY of those pages. The site is a business directory that seems to be automatically scraping business listings and adding them to hundreds of different categories. Low quality crap that I've disavowed just in case. I have hand checked a bunch of the pages that WMT is reporting with links to us by viewing source, but there's no links to us. I've also used crawlers to check for links, but they turn up nothing. The pages do, however, mention our brand name. I find this very odd that Google would report links to our site when there isn't actually links to our site. Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?
Technical SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Link building to ROOT domain OR to WWW.?
Hello, Here I come with one more 'sensitive' question, hoping that you SEO gurus could give some input on. My title explains pretty much what I'm wondering about, but let me give you some short data. I have from .htaccess file set that all traffic goes to WWW.mydomain.com. I know that it is 'better' for search engines not to have duplicate destinations as that can give decreased page rank because of 'double content'. As for search engines http://domain.com and http://www.domain.com is totally different domains. Now wondering one thing: If I build a several thousands of backlinks at various sources, blogs, directories, web sites etc etc. - shall I link to domain ROOT or shall I include WWW prefix? When looking at Moz Keyword Analysis for my domains, I can see a block about 'Linking Root Domains' and 'Page Linking Root Domains'. But no 'www' variable (sub-domain) there. As I have already set canonical part so everything shows with WWW on my website - what logic shall I use when building backlinks? How will search engine translate the link juice in regards I wrote above? Thanks in advance, great forum!
Technical SEO | | SEOisSEO0 -
Home page URL
Hi, I work on this site: http://www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/about-us. This is the home page URL. Should this be 301'd to: http://www.towerhousetraining.co.uk? I have created a site map, which I submitted to Google Webmaster Tools, which includes these URL's: /about-us, /training-we-offer & /contact-us. There are a total of 3 pages on the website. Webmaster tools has only indexed 2 out of 3 pages. I think this is something to do with the /about-us URL, as when I do a site: search, these pages appear: www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/, /training-we-offer & /contact-us. I am not sure why Google has indexed the home page as www.towerhousetraining.co.uk/ and not /about-us? Is it a bad idea in general not to have your homepage as your root domain? I added a to the homepage, but am wondering if this was the right thing to do? Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Links from the same server has value or not
Hi Guys, Sometime ago one of the SEO experts said to me if I get links from the same IP address, Google doesn't count them as with much value. For an example, I am a web devleoper and I host all my clients websites on one server and link them back to me. Im wondering whether those links have any value when it comes to seo or should I consider getting different hosting providers? Regards Uds
Technical SEO | | Uds0 -
How Does Link Juice Pass?
Say there is a link on an authoritative site to my site, and the link points to www.mysite.com. However, I have set all URL variations (https://mysite.com, www.mysite.com, mysite.com, etc.) to redirect to http://mysite.com automatically. Does the link juice from this authoritative site pass through the www.mysite.com URL to http://mysite.com automatically due to the automatic redirect? I guess my question is does the link juice automatically pass on to the destination URL, even though it is not the original URL the authoritative site pointed to?
Technical SEO | | NiallTom0 -
How do I know which page a link is from
I've got an interesting situation. I hope you can help. I have a list of links but I'm not sure which pages of my site they are from. How do I know which page a specific link is from? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | VinceWicks0