I just discovered something about Addthis shares, Twitter, and rel-canonical.
-
Let's say I have a page on my site with the url www.mydomain.com/page1.php?id=234.
Let's say it can be accessed by the url www.mydomain.com/page-this-is-a-keyword-rich-url
And let's say that the second example is what I have set as my rel-canonical.
I wondered what would happen when people submitted the non-canonical url to twitter. We know that Twitter shares count for something in SEO. I didn't want things to go to waste if people were landing on my short urls and sharing them on Twitter.
Well, tonight, I shared one of my own urls on Twitter. I was accidentally on the short one (not the canonical), but when I shared it via addthis the long one was shared. So, Addthis must read the canonical and use this to share.
Very cool. At least to me. I may possibly be the only person on the planet that understands what I just wrote, but this is a neat discovery for me.
-
I am still using it on all of my sites... getting hundreds of actions per day. Works great - but I have very few canonical problems.
-
Complicated. Does everyone still recommend addthis for social sharing?
-
I'm seeing that this week on both the Twitter and FB share icons (the official, JavaScript-based ones). They seem to be picking up the canonical tag and sharing the canonical version. It doesn't matter whether the tag has been added recently or has been in place for a while, as far as I can tell.
Honestly, it's strange for my implementation. I'm trying to canonicalize updates on a 30-day challenge to the original post, so the posts aren't really duplicates (I just want to consolidate them for SEO and search usability). So, if someone RTs or Shares those pages they won't be sharing the page they actually read. That seems a bit odd to me, usability-wise.
-
I have also seen AddThis starting to drop page parameters down to the base url.
-
Interesting, Dr Pete has seen similar things happening when using the official twitter retweet button as well. I'm hoping he'll chime in here as well.
-
Ha! I understood, that makes 2 people on the planet. Good share!
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
-
Should rel=publisher tags (pointing out at Google+ Business page) only go on the homepage?
Hello, I've just read... “Publisher tags should only go on the most significant page of your site, usually the homepage.” Is this correct?
Social Media | | McTaggart0 -
Do you think that Content Locking (force to share to unlock content) is manipulative and will eventually be penalised by Google?
There is a tactic called content locking which requires a user to share a post or homepage URL in order to unlock content (either a video, a full post or downloadable ebook). Do you think this is manipulating signals to increase search rankings? Argument Against Using Content Locking Social signals and links from Google Plus shares clearly correlate to increased search engine visibility. Requiring a user to pay for content with social sharing is only used to improve search rankings. According to the webmaster guidelines: "Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?'" Argument For Using Content Locker Users tend to value their social profiles and won't share something unless they believe it is valuable. Requiring a share is just a push to motivate them to share something they value. Additionally, it is similar to an email opt-in in that the publisher now has a social media lead they can follow up on. It's not just about SEO, it's about tapping into social network traffic and engagement on social networks.
Social Media | | designquotes1 -
Facebook Likes When Sharing
Company A Someone shares a post from Company B on their Facebook page. The post generated 1000 likes and 300 shares. Only a small percentage of likes show up for Company B's page. Why does Company B's page not receive all the likes or at least a higher percentage for that post?
Social Media | | Pinlaser0 -
Bespoke Twitter Feed
Buongiorno from 19 Degrees C wetherby UK 🙂 Ok here goes... is it possible to umbed a twitter feed on a web page that only shows specific hash tag group(s) eg #commercial property. Grazie tanto,
Social Media | | Nightwing
David0 -
How can I track on my facebook page shared links without using short url redirect service?
Hi, I wondering how can I track and analyze on all my shared links in my facebook business page without using short url redirect service like: “Tiny” url or “bitly”? Thanks in advance.
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Twitter based competition
I have a client who wants to run a twitter based competition. The idea is as follows. tweet the url of your favorite product from clients website, with #hashtag . so potentially there could be 100+ tweets referencing three or four unique urls on the clients website. What I am interested in is there any SEO benefit to be gained from this.
Social Media | | dmccarthy0 -
Social Sharing - Reducing Button Size
I'm looking at implementing social sharing buttons throughout a site that I'm working on. I've souced the icons from one of the well known providers however when I test the pages with Firebug I get this: <colgroup><col width="303"> <col width="58"> <col width="86"></colgroup>
Social Media | | GrouchyKids
| Version | File Size | Transfer Size |
| | | |
| Home Page With Social Media Buttons | 1.02MB | 487.7kB |
| Home Page Without Social Media Buttons | 238.3kB | 218.8kB | As you can see the buttons alone have a rather alarming impact on the file/transfer size. I want to reduce the size, has anyone got any ideas/been here before? Justin0
