Google Sidewiki Hacks

September 23, 2009 by ian

Already found two useful hacks in Google Sidewiki, although I still wonder why it's around.

Make links work

If you create a link in a Sidewiki entry, Google adds on some annoying extra stuff, so that:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm

becomes

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm&sa=D&sntz=1

That's an invalid link, and it'll give you a 404 error every time.

The fix is easy: When you insert the link into Sidewiki, add any query string you want to the end of your URL. So the URL above becomes:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm?this=that

Now, when Google adds their stuff, you get:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm?this=that&sa=D&sntz=1

A valid link. Woo-hoo!

Turn off Google Sidewiki for your site

This is a little trickier, and could have SEO implications, so use it carefully. It's also uber geeky, so skip it if code makes your head hurt. But, if the reputation management implications of Sidewiki catch up with you, it'll be worth investigating:

Google Sidewiki is URL-driven. So, if folks do Sidewiki entries for 'www.portent.com', then Sidewiki will only appear for that URL.

It won't appear for, say, 'www.portent.com#leavemealone'.

So, you could write a script that does a 301 redirect to a bookmark, and randomly generate a different bookmark each time. The result:

Folks navigate to 'www.portent.com'.

They get:

www.portent.com#awev
www.portent.com#32fda

Etc..

Sidewiki will no longer appear, because there are no entries for that URL.

That's a lot of 301s, though. You could try a 302, or even go as far as doing some sneaky cloaking (sorry, IP delivery), and get away with it.

I'll update this page as more stuff comes up.

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