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
-
Urls Too Long - Should I shorten?
On the crawl of our website we have had a warning that 157 have urls that are too long. When I look at the urls they are generally from 2016 or earlier. Should I just leave them as they are or shorten the urls and redirect to new url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon4 -
Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
Hello, We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page. The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31). The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores. Which of the following choices would you make? 1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA. -or- 2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | XLMarketing0 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Links below linking (not sitelinks)
Hi All, Please can you let me know the name and / or point me at an article / blog / directory on how best to achieve additional links under a search engine listing (I don't mean site links) e.g. I do a search for 'home insurance' on Google.co.uk and under the listing for Compare the Market it has - home insurance, building insurance and landlords insurance. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Vodafone0 -
Link building question
ok so we paid the top firm in seo to help us build an seo strategy and i think we have a good one. We are changing our link building tactics and making more Pr related links and creating awesome content on blogs or our own site to generate traffic and links to our site. We have data from our engineer which should be interesting and we are going to sponsor events, do some link baiting with some of our articles, get a pr firm to get us some good articles on major sites and go to events around phily where we will have unique content and a unique perspective such as car shows ect. The problem is even though all the content will be linked to our site how do we link them. We got hit by penguin but in these articles or blogs should we use the anchor text for the word we are using. The company says dont do it right now bc we got hit with penguin and should only use the brand. I have no idea how only using the brand and not the keywords will magically make us rank for certain keywords. Anyone have an opinion. Thank you and we do pretty well with seo but we did get little bit of a hit with penguin that we are eliminating links and making a new way of thinking when it comes to link building. We also just hired a designer so we are going to build 100s of pages on the site to increase seo with unique content and that is also a goal of ours for the year. We have two marketers on staff and 4 programmers so we are able to do anything. Our urls are terrible but the rest of the site is pretty good
Technical SEO | | goldjake17880 -
Variables in URLS?
How much do variables in URLs hurt indexing of that page? I'm worried that with this huge string of variables that the pages won't get indexed. Here's what I think we should have: http://adomainname.com/New/Local/State/City/Make/Model/ Here's the current URL:http://adomainname.com/New/Local/MN/Bayport/Jeep/Liberty?curPage=1&pageResultSize=50&orderDir=DESC&orderBy=ModifiedDate&conditionId=1&makeId=7&modelId=141&stateProvinceName=Minnesota&mc=1
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit. I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links. My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0
