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The Mysterious URL Hashtag Suffixes

From time to time, we see evidence of anxiety, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.
Why do my posts have hashtag suffixes?
and from some, more anxiety
How do I know what hashtags to add, when referencing my posts?
These blog owners don't understand the purposes of the suffixes.

Third party post linking services, like AddThis and LinkWithin, add the hashtags, to give them the ability to track access of the posts - in a blog which uses their service to link the posts.

Use of the hashtags is not required, simply to access the posts. In fact, including the hashtags, outside the context of the service providing the post links, could interfere with the service's ability to consistently track use of their product.

AddThis provides a reference Why is there an extra string after my url after putting your codes?.

They're there so that we can collect analytics when someone copies the URL out of the address bar instead of going through our sharing tool. It shouldn't affect people linking to your site and can provide insight into what content is the most popular on your site.

The mysterious hashtags are not needed - you can do without.

The hashtags are not needed for accessing the posts in the blog. If you add the hashtags when referencing the posts outside AddThis, you may be creating false references, implying AddThis use.

If you care about consistent reporting within AddThis, you probably should not add the hashtags to any of your own code. Leave the hashtags to the internal portions of AddThis, LinkWithin, or whatever third party post linking service that you're using.

AddThis even provides an option, to eliminate the hashtags completely.

If they're not wanted or are causing issues, you're free to disable address bar sharing tracking.

and

More information about address bar sharing analytics is available here: http://www.addthis.com/help/address-bar-sharing-analytics

Stop worrying about details which don't affect you - and get back to work on blog content.

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