Share This Catching On

Posted in: Share Icon, WordPress

It looks like my Share This plugin is catching on with WordPress users.

On Dec 12th, there weren’t any pages that showed up on a search for “powered by share this”1, now there are nearly 200,000240,000.

That’s a pretty good initial adoption of Share This. I think it might be time for step 2. :)

  1. Which only appears in version 1.3 and greater. [back]

Popularity: 6% [?]

Posted December 27th, 2006 @ 10:30 AM

15 Replies

  1. Erik J. Barzeski adds this Comment:

    I’m using it. And I plan to use it in some desktop software I’m writing, too…

    December 27th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

  2. Manda adds this Comment:

    I use it :)

    December 27th, 2006 at 1:28 pm

  3. Tom adds this Comment:

    I saw it too ! I think it’s very nice and much more convenient than seeing 36,000 links and over to bookmark an URI.
    The little logo and the explicit “share this” are simple enough to let a click on it. I hardly imagine how it could be improved :)

    December 27th, 2006 at 1:34 pm

  4. Rick Beckman adds this Comment:

    I use it, but I added a robots.txt line to block pages with “akst_action” in the URL; allowing it means Google gets at least two versions of your page: with and without the share-this URL variables, and they seem to frown on duplicate content.

    Here’s a basic robots.txt contents to prevent such duplication. As far as I know, only Google supports wildcard and variable recognition in the Disallow lines; other search engines are sure to catch on in time, though.

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /*akst_action=*

    December 27th, 2006 at 1:41 pm

  5. Kerim Friedman adds this Comment:

    Could the goal of Rick’s robots.txt hint (thanks by the way) also be accomplished by incorporating “no follow” into the plugin itself?

    So far Google’s site overlay shows nobody clicking on the Share This link on either of my sites, but it is innocuous enough that I think I’ll continue using it. [edited, support issue removed per terms in comment form - ak]

    December 27th, 2006 at 6:17 pm

  6. Luke Williams adds this Comment:

    Wow this could be pretty useful, might have to use this haha.

    December 27th, 2006 at 7:14 pm

  7. seonewsblog adds this Comment:

    Been using it from the start. Love it man keep it up!

    Thank you

    December 27th, 2006 at 8:39 pm

  8. Richard adds this Comment:

    Hi Alex - Thanks so much for this superb plugin. I’ve just read your latest post about the $1 donation idea and it reminded me to paypal a donation to you. I’ve done that to the tune of $15 as I think the work you’ve done on this plugin is really helpful. I wonder if I could ask for a bit of advice though please. I’m using WP 2.03, with the 3 Column K2 theme by Bharath Kumar. I’ve installed the Share This plugin and it works flawlessly for the listed social bookmarking tools. However, the email function doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve used the email function on other sites using your plugin and it works like a dream. Do you have any idea please why the email function might not be working on my site? (I’ve installed the Angsuman’s Authenticated Wordpress Plugin on my site, but I’ve tried the email function with this turned off, to no avail.) If you were able to fix this for me, I’d gladly make another paypal donation. (To me, the sort of advice people like you can provide is valuable and ought to attract a donation.) Look forward to hearing from you. Many thanks in advance. Richard

    December 28th, 2006 at 1:46 am

  9. Patrick adds this Comment:

    I use it because it removes outbound links for the blog post. I use it for the pr thing ….

    December 28th, 2006 at 5:11 am

  10. Helli adds this Comment:

    I’m using it too, and I’ve extend it with a link to add a bookmark to the browser (works with IE, Firefox, Opera and maybe others) and I extend the email feature to use the local email program if the user is not logged in to the blog. Helli

    December 28th, 2006 at 1:44 pm

  11. Abhilash adds this Comment:

    Nice work yet again, Alex!

    I’m installing it now, but am REALLY glad that Rick shared his robots.txt advice.

    I don’t think a nofollow solves the problem, Kerim. Rick was talking about a duplicate content issue, not one that involves passing link love. Even if you ‘nofollow’ a link, the SE’s still crawl through it, they just don’t count it as a “vote”. (I know this–I asked this question specifically in the Q&A at the last SES Chicago).

    The only way to make it work without the robots.txt would mean to “noindex” the urls that have “akst_actionâ€? in the string…

    December 28th, 2006 at 8:15 pm

  12. Scott Carpenter adds this Comment:

    Thanks for developing the Share This plug-in - was a cinch to install and works a treat! Please also receive my thanks via PayPal. ;)

    December 31st, 2006 at 6:01 am

  13. Alex adds this Comment:

    I think there may be a little FUD here. In a standard WordPress install, your content is already duplicated numerous times:

    1. Permalink
    2. Home page and “paged� history view when it rolls of the history page.
    3. Year archive view
    4. Month archive view
    5. Day archive view
    6. Category archive view (* # of categories you place the post in)

    Anyone who uses a tagging plugin could add an additional n views for the tags on each post.

    In addition, my 1.x mobile edition plugin created alternate URLs for mobile versions of the content and I never heard of any penalties because of it.

    January 1st, 2007 at 8:48 pm

  14. Romer!can adds this Comment:

    Alex - 470,000. And thanks.

    Rick - Thanks.

    Kerim - Thanks.

    March 30th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

  15. Alex adds this Comment:

    It’s actually much more than that now - I added the nofollow, noindex code so it’s not reflecting exactly usage anymore.

    March 30th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

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