Linkedin makes a change to Geo specific public profile URLS
Written by: Justin Parks | November 7, 2009
Having caught a tweet this morning from @millerian regarding a change in the Linkedin Public Profile URL I checked out the post he linked to on Search Engine Chocolate and began my usually 10 minutes of head scratching and wondering what the hell was going on.
It seems that the public URL structure we have become accustomed to on linkedin has incorporated a Geo-location type attribute in the link structure and I couldn’t quite figure out why they made this change from a usability perspective and because, as Joanna Butler explains it actually makes the process of connecting and networking on a global front a little more confusing and limited especially when you consider that not everyone is confined to the area they live in when it comes to doing business.
Take my very own situation as an example. I’m from Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and I live in Spain. I network and work with people from all over the world and of course locally, but according to this new definition of the public profile URL I will end up with a profile that includes the ES (España) geo tag included in my public profile to encourage the use of local search in search engines, potentially limiting me from appearing in searchings on another local… go figure.
This means that the “claimed” public profile URL I have:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinparks will become http://es.linkedin.com/in/justinparks in the future, because I am residing in Spain. Joanna rightly points out the issues of duplicate content per profile and canonical URL issues regarding SEO but most importantly the need to rebuild your profiles authority on a local and international level may be the greatest issue.
Regarding the reasoning behind it, again as Joanna points out I can only guess that they have done this to allow more people, with the same names, to have more specific public profile URLS. Some food for thought I guess.
Topics: Social Media | 5 Comments »
Posted on 07 November 2009 by Justin Parks
Justin has extensive experience in the on line world having been involved in website design and creation putting businesses on line since 2001. Strategy implementation, project management, design, process, social media, seo, you name it he's done it.
Justin Parks has written 14 articles for Cloud Mixer
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