How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags?

[nicole.healthline]

How do search engines treat urls that end in hashtags? For example, www.domain.com/abc#xyz.

[RyanKent]

Hashtags can be used for multiple purposes in URLs but the only one I have personal experience with is their tracking ability. Two examples of services which can track URLs via hashtags are TYNT and AddThis.

You add a code snippet to your site in much the same way that you add Google Analytics. From that point forward, all of your URLs will have a unique hash tag added. Anytime someone copies and pastes your URL, it will contain a this tag.

When a user clicks on the link, you can identify the specific source via TYNT or AddThis. The service is free and they offer nice reporting options. Tynt is more experienced in this area, but AddThis offers other social sharing tools (facebook, twitter, google+1, etc) as well.

I used to use TYNT until AddThis added the feature, which is when I switched to AddThis.

[RyanKent]

Yes

Feel free to try it. Take this post for example. Copy the URL, then add a hashtag and some characters after it. You will return to this exact same post. The hashtag offers a tracking ability but otherwise does not impact the actual URL.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-do-search-engines-treat-urls-that-end-in-hashtags#sgdgfsdf

[nicole.healthline]

So, if someone links to www.domain.com/abc#xyz and www.domain.com/abc#nz, then it is the same as linking twice to www.domain.com/abc?

Thanks!

[RyanKent]

Google truncates the URL at the hashmark. Using your example they treat the URL as www.domain.com/abc

While every search engine is their own private company and can do as they wish, it seems reasonable that most, if not all, follow Google's process.