MobileMoxie Glossary
JumpLinks, Bookmarks, Anchor-Links & Handles
JumpLinks, sometimes called Anchor-Links or Bookmarks allow a webmaster to direct a user to a specific section of a page, or back to the top of a page, to help users navigate long pages, without scrolling or searching on the page. They were common in the early days of web development, but then fell out of favor because they confused Google. Eventually, Google stopped indexing anything after a # to prevent the duplicate indexing of a page caused by it having multiple jump links on the page. Starting with Google’s shift to Mobile-First Indexing, it seems like Google may again be indexing some jump-links, as they were showing up in Google Search Console reports separate from the main URL, with their own traffic and ranking statistics. Google seems to be using all of these things to help with indexing, and even sometimes including them in the SERP, as in this example: https://www.screencast.com/t/EZs9rV3PUyiM This shift is likely caused by Google’s attempt to index JavaScript and WebApps, which rely more on things like parameters and identifiers being passed in the URL, without changing the page. Now, jump links also appear to help drive Fraggles, in which a fragment of text is lifted into a search result, and when the search result is clicked, the browser scrolls directly to that text.
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