Facebook duplicate url’s and rel=”canonical”

Yesterday I received this question about Facebook pages from my girlfriend:

Could you tell me which URL, if any, take you directly to the page (make sure you’re not logged in):

 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adventureland/110824832007?created#/pages/Adventureland/100397302070

 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Adventureland/100397302070?ref=search

 

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Adventureland/100397302070?ref=mf

 

Why doesn’t Facebook make things like this easier?

This got me thinking. The short answer was actually none of the above. You can strip all the parameters and # tags out of Facebook urls to give the ‘canonical’ url – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Adventureland/100397302070.

So I wondered with all the links going to Facebook pages (and groups, profiles etc) which amount to about 800 million according to Site Explorer how many people are blindly copy pasting urls with tracking variables like the ?ref=mf attached?

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Social Networking is Hard Work – Sarah’s Social Media Experiment

So, my social media experiment was probably the most pathetic experiment ever conducted. (See part one here: http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog/?p=278) My plan was to throw myself into all things social media for the whole of April and then write about it in May. However, as you can see I am only just getting around to writing about it now, not because I’ve been so submerged that I haven’t had time to write, but more because I kept finding something more interesting to do and suddenly over two months had gone by and I hadn’t done a thing.

Anyway, I did try…a little, but mostly found the experiment very frustrating.

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The Twitter Metrics that will completely change the way you use Twitter

Social media is notoriously difficult to measure, hence the efforts of Will McInnes and his band of merry social media darlings at measurementcamp.

But for some reason there really seems to have been a perfect storm for Twitter, as already some people have come up with some really valuable metrics to measure how well you are performing on the site.

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5 Functions I’d Cut Off My Right Arm For Twitter to Add

If you’ve read our latest whitepaper about Twitter you’ll already know how head of heels we are with the service and know how we think it’s going to work with more general search engine marketing.

photo credit: g-hat

But despite our teenage crush there are a few little niggle we really wish they would solve.

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You’ll know twitter jumped the shark when….

At the moment, Twitter is right at the very peak of its hype, but surely it can’t be long before it officially jumps the shark….

But as a public service announcement, below are a couple of sure fire signs of an impending twitocaylpse Read on

Find out who’s getting ROI from twitter with the Tweet Sheet Whitepaper

It’s here our latest whitepaper, this time on Twitter with some tips aimed specifically at the PR industry, but with plenty of value for everyone, or at least we hope!

It’s split into six sections:

1. WHAT IS TWITTER AND WHY ALL THE FUSS?
2. EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL USE OF TWITTER
3. HOW PRS CAN USE TWITTER
4. PRACTICAL TIPS ON GETTING MORE FROM TWITTER
5. WHAT’S IT GOT TO DO WITH SEO?
6. TIPS FROM INDUSTRY EXPERTS

You can download the white paper here. We’d love to hear your feedback, either here in the comments or on Twitter using the hash tag #tweetsheet.

The SEO Industries 25 Most Popular Twitter Users – A Year On, Where Are They Now?

On the 8^th of May last year, Kelvin wrote a post on the top 25 Twitterers. Now one year on, we return to see how they’re doing now. Of course none of these numbers are a scratch on Stephen Fry’s 392, 822 followers.

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Integrated Search Marketing – A Quick How to Guide

If you’re thinking about integrating SEO and PPC, what are the benefits of integration and how exactly do you go about it?

The benefits of integrated search
Reducing Adwords spend is usually the main driving force behind integrating pay per click and natural search engine marketing, but there are a great many other advantages to this particular mix:

•    Attracting quality links to increase natural search engine positioning for your top keywords.
•    Delivering search optimised content assets that promote your brand, either onsite or offsite.
•    Driving higher volumes of relevant traffic from search engines, referrers and social media.
•    Increasing goal conversions including subscriptions, brochure downloads and online sales.

photo credit: John Sexton

In short, integrated search marketing improves the effectiveness of your marketing spend, delivering a greater return on investment and enabling more creative, newsworthy content to be developed. It’s a kind of virtuous circle, the more effective your marketing mix, the more amplified your natural search positions, the better your ROI.

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The Latest Ultimatum: “It’s me or Twitter…”

I’ve been working in search marketing for a few years now and although I understand the benefits that social media provides to companies; I even go out and train people in how to use social media to increase revenue/brand awareness, I’m not so sure I see the value on a personal level.

I have to admit to being a bit of a late starter with these things. I’m always the last to sign up to something – I like to wait and see if it’s just a phase or whether it will actually stick around before I give up hours of my time signing up and personalising my account. When I finish work or at the weekends I like to spend my time with real people, get some fresh air, see places, I don’t want to spend my time blogging (mostly because I don’t think I lead an exciting enough life to warrant writing about), sending people virtual presents or finding out what a complete stranger did that morning.  But I’ve begun to notice how social media is completely changing the way we interact with one another, in good and bad ways, the old and the young – it seems there is no getting way from it, so maybe now is the time to dive in and give it a try.

Source: Flicker, Photo by Marcin Kempski

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Tweet Your Way Out of Unemployment?

It’s still making the headlines and we can’t help but add fuel to the 140 character fire.

When Twitter bought the search engine Summize back in July last year the Twitterverse was made infinitely more usable for everyone, but it still didn’t solve Twitters business model issue – the fact that they don’t have one.

photo credit: treefell

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