Buffer Link and Google Impressions

[PeaSoupDigital]

Afternoon,

I noticed a spike in impressions over a couple of days in April, so I investigated Analytics to see where these were coming from. It appears these impressions were split between two URLs; one was a blog post, the other was the Buffer link to the blog post that we used on Twitter and Facebook. According to Analytics, this Buffer URL received 1000 impressions over two days, with an average SERP position of 16. This surely can't be right, can it? Is this just another Analytics quirk? After two days of a decent amount of impressions to this Buffer link, the amount of impressions dropped to pretty much zero.

I know Tweets are now starting to rank, but this would be the Twitter URL, not the Buffer link to our blog post?

Any ideas,

Cheers,

Lewis

[PeaSoupDigital]

Thanks for the response, guys. The Buffer URL that is driving organic traffic is:

http://www.peasoupdigital.co.uk/blog/post/2015/04/24/Why-Google-Plus-Isnt-As-Bad-You-Thought?utm_content=buffer9c2cf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=buffer

It looks like you're right; it's the Google+ Buffer link that's ranking. There's no canonical on the blog post as we're using BlogEngine and they don't automatically add one. I'll have to check with the developers to see if we can manually insert one.

Cheers,

Lewis

[SEOMeetups]

Greetings Lewis

So yes URL shortners can and will get indexed if there are enough links to them, there are 71.8 million bit.ly links currently indexed in Google... I did a check of my travel site and noticed this Buffer UTM link in GWT Top Pages report http://travel-network.co/review/aggelika?utm_content=bufferebb76&utm_medium=social&utm_source=plus.google.com&utm_campaign=TravelNetwork.net.au it was indexed and getting impressions but it was only a small amount last month and I checked and now only the canonical version remains indexed.

But it was only the Google+ version being indexed as Buffer creates a unique URL for each share on a social network, so the only question is did you manually share the Buffer link on Facebook & Twitter so it was actually the same link? Also did you check to confirm your page has the correct canonical tag in place so it reduces the chances Google will get confused and indexed the Buffer link instead of the actual blog post link.

But I couldn't find any other examples of Buffer links being indexed, if you are worried about the situation would could use the Buffer settings and select "No Shortnening" option.

Hope that helps a little.

David

[katemorris]

I had a whole answer and lost it due to a cookie faux pas.

It looks like there are about 2 million buff.ly URLs in the Google index, so as long as you are seeing the buff.ly URL as a referral and not a page on your site, this looks possible. It is weird indeed and I don't know if it's intentional on the part of Bufferly, but it is happening for sure.

The URLs could be being indexed and then dropped from the index after a few days. And it's a social URL, so the drop makes sense there as well.