Reference old URLs to maintain counts

Resolved agreenstreet
(@agreenstreet)

7 years, 8 months ago
Hi There,

How do we reference back to the old page url in the new plugin that has the missing thousands of counts we just lost?

Old Page URL: http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html
New Page URL: http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group/

Have just moved from the old ShareThis plugin v7.8 over to the latest ShareThis Buttons Plugin v1.1.8 on our WordPress site v4.9.8.

We have lost thousands of counts on the inline ShareThis buttons for (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Shares). Under the old ShareThis plugin v7.8 we used to manually refer back to an old URL in our page code, when our website migrated some years ago from HTML pages to WordPress.

Here is our old code that used to bring up the counts on the page:

<span class=”st_facebook” st_title=”What is a Mastermind Group? A Definition, plus articles, resources” st_url=”http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html” st_image=”http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/images/mastermind-blank-with-people-short-200.jpg”></span>

Here are the following things I have tried with the new plugin installed.

Referencing this help page:
https://www.sharethis.com/support/customization/upgrade-custom-legacy-sharethis-buttons/

Code used:
<div data-network=”facebook” data-url=”http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html” class=”sharethis-inline-buttons”><span class=”count”></span>share</div>

Setting the canonical URL for the page (using Yoast) to point to…
http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html

This correct places all the Open Graph (OG) references in the page code but doesn’t then change the page counts that the ShareThis plugin calculates.

Referencing this help page:
https://www.sharethis.com/support/customization/customize-share-urls/

Code used:
<div class=”sharethis-inline-share-buttons” data-url=”http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html”></div>

There is no way for me to individually edit the page headers in a WordPress site so I couldn’t figure out a way to test this solution or make it happen for individual pages.

I’m out of ideas, is it possible to reference old URL’s to maintain historical ShareThis counts. This is a major SEO hit for our website we had over 35K (thousand) shares on this one page and it is our number one page for the search term…

“What is a mastermind group”

We need this solution or will lose business.

Thank you for your consideration and help.

Alastair
- This topic was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by agreenstreet.
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Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

Thread Starter agreenstreet
(@agreenstreet)

7 years, 8 months ago

OK I figured out the solution. The old url data DOES still exist and can be counted, it was just being referenced incorrectly by my code so my mistake.

Rather than using the ShareThis shortcode name [sharethis-inline-buttons]

Which you would think you reference to update the plugin created buttons. You need to use the div class name below:

Incorrect div name: <div class=”sharethis-inline-buttons”></div>
Correct div name: <div class=”sharethis-inline-share-buttons”></div>

Note the very important “-SHARE-” addition to the div name. My previous code was referencing the wrong div name so the data-url didn’t update the count totals on the manually created sharethis buttons.

Documented here: https://www.sharethis.com/support/installation/migrate-from-sharethis-legacy-buttons-to-inline-buttons/

Example code below now gives the fully combined counts (35.3K) from the old HTML page and the new WordPress page (on the new WordPress page).

Old Page URL: http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html
New Page URL: http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group/

<div data-network=”facebook” data-url=”http://www.thesuccessalliance.com/what-is-a-mastermind-group.html” class=”sharethis-inline-share-buttons”></div>

This is manually inserted code on the WordPress page, you uncheck the auto-generated buttons from appearing on the page in WordPress edit mode:

Include at top of page content
Include at bottom of page content

Hoping this clarification and solution helps someone else out there with the same issue and saves them from tearing out their hair for two days.

Alastair

Andres (ShareThis Support)
(@andressharethis)

7 years, 7 months ago

Hi there @agreenstreet,

You are correct and thank you so much for your input.

Please do let me know if there is anything I can help you with.

Hope you have an amazing rest of your week!

Cheers,
Andres

Thread Starter agreenstreet
(@agreenstreet)

7 years, 7 months ago

Thanks the issue is resolved.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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