[ARCHIVED CONTENT] AddThis - Help - Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

• General Questions
• Accounts & Registration
• Sharing & Privacy
• Flash, Widgets & Other Embedded Content
• Installing AddThis
• Customizing AddThis
• Languages & Localization
• Analytics
• Browser Add-Ons & Toolbars
• Other Troubleshooting Topics

General Questions

What is AddThis?

AddThis helps website publishers and bloggers spread their content across the web, by making it easy for visitors to bookmark and share content to their favorite social destinations.

How much does AddThis cost?

Nothing! AddThis is absolutely free for anyone to install on their site or blog.

Can AddThis provide me with more than just sharing tools?

Yes, the AddThis platform's sophisticated data processing system provides analytics that help you understand how your content is being shared to hundreds of social media destinations, how that sharing drives traffic back to your site, and who the users are behind it. Measures like Shares, Clicks and Viral Lift describe where content is distributed and quantify how much traffic sharing brings to your site.

Our audience analysis leverages AddThis’ huge reach to identify your real Influencers and tell you what interests them, how much they care about each interest, and how your site’s mix of interests compares to the average site. These insights can help drive your content strategy and provide a foundation for all of your Social Media Optimization (SMO) efforts.

Why not just make my own sharing tool?

Because AddThis offers so much more! AddThis is THE easy, one-stop shop for sharing tools that help your visitors share anything to anyone, anywhere. We maximize the distribution of your content and traffic brought to your site by integrating with over 300 services all over the world. Our personalization tools make it easy to offer the right sharing services to the right user at the right time. Finally, we'll synthesize that sharing activity to help you understand your audience and how they're interacting with your content.

Can I add a Facebook Like button to my AddThis toolbox? How about a Tweet button from Twitter?

Absolutely. Our goal is to provide one place to find all your favorite sharing tools. You can easily add a Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet or Tweetmeme Retweet button to your AddThis toolbox with one line of code. For examples of these buttons, check out our Gallery, or refer to our Client API help doc to learn how to add these buttons to your toolbox code.

I have a great idea for AddThis! Where can I send it?

We'd love to hear your feedback. You can post your ideas or feedback in our product suggestions forum or email us. Please note that we will own any feedback you provide and, we’re sorry to say (though our accountants aren’t) that we won’t pay you any royalties (see Feedback section in the Terms of Service).

Can you handle the traffic from my very popular web site?

Absolutely! We recently moved our infrastructure to Akamai, the leader in web application acceleration, performance management, and content delivery.

Can my company host the AddThis button code?

As a publisher, you are allowed to self host or cache the code for the AddThis button on your website in accordance our Terms of Service.

Here's a quick summary – in order to self host and/or cache the code:

you will create an AddThis account and we will provide you with a URL from which you may load the code (contact us here - please include your account information).
you will refresh the code on a regular basis (at least once every 24 hours) to allow us to provide updates and bug fixes.
you will not change, alter, or modify the code for the AddThis button in any way.
you will agree with our Terms of Service Code Caching Policy

Please note that code caching applies to the initial widget.js, and not the entire AddThis stack.

What data does AddThis collect and why?

At AddThis we are concerned about your privacy and disclose our collection, use and sharing policies in our Privacy Policy.

Why did the AddThis menu load a tiny Flash file?

The menu used Flash to get an accurate count of unique users of your AddThis Menu for usage reporting. We no longer use Flash for tracking.

Accounts & Registration

Do I have to register?

No, but we do provide registered publishers access to industrial-strength analytics for the AddThis buttons that appear on their websites. If you are a publisher, we can provide these analytics only if we know who you are and with which website you are associated. These reports include information about what content was shared, where it was shared to, geographic information, details about specific sharing services, audience interests, and much more.

What's a nickname and how is it used?

AddThis nicknames are used to identify those participating in our Forum.

What are AddThis profiles and profile IDs? How are they used?

Profiles allow publishers to organize and share AddThis analytics data with team members or clients. Profiles also include configuration options like blocked domains, custom email templates and other settings. Each profile can contain analytics data for one or more domains, and is identified by a Profile ID, which need to be included in AddThis code or tools in order for analytics data to be reported. Learn more

I lost my username. What should I do?

No problem at all, just Sign In with your email address.

I lost my password. What should I do?

Just fill out our Forgot Your Password form and an email with a password reset link will be sent to the email address with which you registered.

Can I have more than one account?

Yes, but each must have a unique email address and nickname. Before you create a second account, however, note that you can track analytics for more than one domain in the same account. The analytics console provides a filter to display analytics from a selected domain, or all data across all domains.

Also, AddThis Profiles allow publishers to create "buckets" of analytics data and configuration settings that can be shared with other team members or clients. Learn more

How do I delete my account?

We'd be sorry to see you go, but if you need to delete your AddThis account you may do so at any time.

Sharing & Privacy

Why does the menu come up on hover versus on click?

Our research indicates that configuring the menu to appear on hover increases sharing by a factor of four, over the menu appearing on click. This feature is configurable, however we recommend that publishers retain the hover interaction.

Why don't I see the share counter increment right away in other browsers when I share?

It will usually take a minute or so for a share to sync across all of the various share counters across the web. Here's an example: you share something on your site using the AddThis share counter in browser A, and see it increment. You then go to the same page in browser B, which shows the old number. After a short period of time, however, the number will update. If after 10 minutes you still don't see the share, drop a post in our forum and we'll take a closer look.

What are sharing settings?

Sharing settings allow you to personalize your AddThis sharing menus with your favorite places to share. You can select your favorite services from any AddThis menu by selecting Settings, then picking the services where you like to share. You can then change the order that your services will be presented using the arrow buttons on the right side of the form. The services you select will be featured at the top of AddThis menus, and bolded so they are easy to find. These settings will be stored in your browser as a "cookie", a small bit of text that browsers use to remember information.

Why do my page URLs have extra information at the end when they are shared?

AddThis analytics can track shares of your content, when those shares bring traffic back to your site, who those visitors are, and how many generations of sharing follow. This is accomplished by adding a short parameter to the end of URLs when they are shared. This parameter can then track the full life-cycle of that share. These enhanced metrics are offered by default as part of AddThis analytics when a publisher registers at AddThis.com, but can be turned off if desired. For more information, check out the click tracking help page.

Share via e-mail doesn't seem to work. What should I do?

The first thing we'd recommend doing is check to make sure the e-mail didn't go into your spam folder. If that's not the case, please drop us a line in our forum.

Do you collect e-mail addresses when an item is shared via e-mail? When I share via e-mail, the email says the sender's address hasn't been verified. What does that mean?

When a user uses our email feature, we collect an email address for the sender and any recipients, for the purpose of delivering the message. At this time, we don't have a way of verifying the identity of the sender other than the email address he or she provides. For more information about information we collect and how we use it, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

What steps do you take to prevent spam from being sent via AddThis?

We use a combination of techniques, such as automatic rate limiting based on factors such as who is sending the email, from where, to whom, and message content. We also have the ability to explicitly blacklist based on problematic senders, receivers, and content, if an issue is reported.

What do you mean in your Terms of Service when it says that you have the right to distribute my content?

We only distribute a URL link to the specific content chosen by an end user on which our bookmarking service is used, including a brief description. We don't access any other content. For more information, please refer to our Terms of Service.

Does AddThis work on mobile devices?

AddThis is designed to work on any mobile device that supports web browsing. The AddThis menu is optimized for browsers that support Javascript, but will also gracefully degrade to work on devices that do not.

How about the iPhone? iPad? Android?

Absolutely. As with any other JavaScript enabled web browser, the AddThis menu will work on the these devices. However, we developed a special interface for iPhones, iPads and Android phones, each of which is optimized for that device's form factor. These interfaces will automatically be presented if AddThis detects that device's web browser.

Flash, Widgets and Other Embedded Content

Can I use AddThis to share more than just pages?

Absolutely, AddThis can be used to share Flash content, like video players and widgets, "embedded" in pages. Your visitors are always ultimately sharing a URL, which ensures that your content can go as many places as possible. For sites that support Flash widgets, however, AddThis will ALSO pass along the embedded content, letting your user share the widget. iGoogle and Facebook are examples of sites that support this, and Facebook's treatment of videos in news feeds is a good example. For more explanation, refer to Embedded Content sharing.

How do I share Flash widgets from an HTML page?

Setting up widget sharing is easy: you use our sharing tools just as you normally would, but you also to tell us the URL and preferred width and height of the SWF file. To do this, you just tag your page with Facebook-style meta tags. When AddThis shares your page to a supporting destination, that destination will read these tags and share your Flash object instead of just a link. If you don't control the page or can't add can't tags to it, you can also pass extra parameters to our APIs (though we recommend the tagging approach). For more information, please refer to Embedded Content Sharing.

How do I add AddThis sharing to a Flash website or widget?

From inside your Flash asset, you'll need to create buttons that invoke sharing to a given service such as Facebook and Twitter. Link these buttons to our sharing endpoints for each particular destination (described here). For example, the following link can share a YouTube player to Facebook:

http://api.addthis.com/oexchange/0.8/forward/facebook/offer?url=http://www.addthis.com
&title=Addthis%20Video
&swfurl=http://www.youtube.com/v/1F7DKyFt5pY&hl=en&fs=1
&screenshot=http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/1F7DKyFt5pY/default.jpg
&height=560
&width=340

We highly recommend pointing your URL to an HTML page containing meta tags that describe the Flash content, instead of just specifying it on the call; this is also a best practice for sites like Facebook, search engines, and more.

If you don't want to write the Flash code to do all of this, take a look at our Flash Example Code. We offer both a low-level sharing API as well as a full Flash-native sharing menu.

For more information, please refer to the documentation on Installing AddThis in Flash, the Sharing Endpoints, and the Sharing Embedded Content guide.

Do I have to code my own sharing menu or button for Flash?

We do have sample code to help you out. We offer both a low level ShareAPI class and SWF library that wraps the Sharing API, as well as a sharing menu user interface component. Take a look at the Flash Examples page for details and to get the code.

How do I pass configuration parameters to Flash?

To send configuration parameters to Flash, you will just need to pass the values in the SWF URL as a query string. For example:

myflash.swf?id=25&page=69&type=454

You access those values from flash like this:

var id = root.loaderInfo.parameters.id;
var page = root.loaderInfo.parameters.page;
var type = root.loaderInfo.parameters.type;

Whenever you reference the SWF, such as when sharing it via an API call, putting it as the value of a tag on your HTML page, just be sure to include the appropriate parameters there.

How do I avoid overlay issues with AddThis and Flash elements?

If you are having trouble with AddThis menus being obscured by Flash elements on your pages, please refer to the Flash Compatibility help topic.

Installing AddThis

How can I put AddThis in a WordPress.com blog?

You can install AddThis into the WordPress.com sidebar, and/or at the end of each post. More information and installation instructions >

What's the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

Read more about this topic at WordPress.com >

Can I put the same AddThis button on multiple domains and still get separate analytics?

Yes, you can absolutely put the same AddThis button on mutliple Web sites. In analytics, you'll be given the option of filtering the reports for specific domains.

How do I add the button to Microsoft Office Live?

Create an AddThis account, if you don't already have one
At the end of the registration process, create a Profile ID for analytics

Copy the code below into Notepad:


<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/Footer">
<![CDATA[
<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN -->
<script type="text/javascript">
  addthis_url    = location.href;   
  addthis_title  = document.title;  
  addthis_pub    = 'YOUR-PROFILE-ID';     
</script><script type="text/javascript" 
	src="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110813032310/http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12" ></script>
<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END -->
]]>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Change "YOUR-PROFILE-ID" to the Profile ID you received in step 2
Make sure Advanced Design Tools are activated in MSOL
Paste the code into the Custom Footer Module

How do I uninstall the AddThis Button?

If you've copied and pasted the code into your website, go back into the code and look for  and
, then delete these lines and any code between them. If you've used another method to install AddThis on your page, please go to the forum and we'll be happy to help you.

How can I optimize Addthis load time?

AddThis can be loaded asynchronously to improve load time. To do so, you need to add the "async" variable to the end of your addthis_widget.js script tag.

Customizing AddThis

Can I customize my sharing menu?

The AddThis menu has been designed to be as customizable as possible. You can configure the button, the look and feel of the sharing menu, the list of sharing services that appear in the initial compact menu, and much more. And now you can use the AddThis Toolbox to create your own menu and still receive analytics data.

Can I customize the services in the expandable menu?

The full A-Z list of services in the expanded menu cannot be customized, however you can exclude particular services by setting the JavaScript variable addthis_exclude to a comma-separated list; e.g., var addthis_exclude = 'print,twitter';

Can I make my own sharing menu using your tools?

Absolutely! With the AddThis Toolbox you can create your own menu and still receive analytics data. If you want to completely roll your own sharing on top of the AddThis backend, you can do that too.

Also, be sure to check out some great examples of custom buttons, menus and other implementations of AddThis in our Gallery.

How do I optimize my Facebook shares to include a thumbnail and description?

To learn more about optimizing sharing to Facebook, please visit our Facebook help page.

Can I get a custom e-mail for sharing?

Yes! We recently introduced custom email templates, which allow you to customize the text-only and HTML emails that your visitors will send when they share your content. You can even create multiple templates for different sites or parts of the same site, and select which template should be your default.

How do I suggest a new service for AddThis?

If you would like to submit a service to be integrated with AddThis, visit the Service Directory and select Submit a Service. The service you submit will be reviewed, and, if you prefer, you can be contacted by the AddThis team if the service is approved.

Service providers, please see this guide for information on service requirements.

Will you put advertising in the menu?

We do not currently place 3rd party advertising in the menu, and have no plans to do so. We do, however, reserve the right to do so in the future.

Can I customize or brand the bigger extended menu?

No, we don’t support putting your logo in the expanded menu. It was a feature that we have since deprecated.

Can I remove the AddThis branding from the menu?

No, we don’t support removal of the AddThis branding from our menus.

Can I just use the AddThis backend platform by itself, without using the AddThis client-side menu?

If AddThis Toolbox really doesn't work for you, you can completely roll your own client and just use our backend to do the actual sharing. Check out the Sharing Endpoints.

Languages & Localization

What languages does AddThis support?

AddThis has been translated into over 60 languages, used by people all over the world. The AddThis Language Database includes a list of all supported languages, as well as options to submit a new language or help us improve a currently supported translation.

How does localization work?

Unless a publisher specifies otherwise, the ui_language parameter will automatically be assigned according to the locale of a user's browser, e.g. the Spanish version of Firefox. If that language is supported by AddThis, the user's menu should localize automatically. As a publisher, you can also override the language of your AddThis menu. For more information, please consult the language support and customization help page, which includes localized examples of buttons and button code.

I changed my browser preference to a different language, why isn't my menu translating?

Because AddThis menus are rendered client-side, Firefox cannot reliably localize based on a language chosen in browser preferences. Currently, this is only an issue with Firefox; client-side translation of AddThis menus works with Internet Explorer.

Can I use my own translations?

Yes, and it's easier than you might think! Check out Custom Translations.

How do I submit translations for a language you don't currently support?

If you'd like to contribute a language to the AddThis service, please visit the Language Database. Thank you in advance for helping us bring AddThis to more people all over the world!

Analytics

How long does it take for analytics data to start showing up?

Analytics data should begin to be collected within an hour, assuming that sharing takes place on pages where the button has been installed. Note however that all reports by default show data from the last 30 days, which does not include today (a partial day).

When a report includes a section titled, "Top...", what does that mean?

In most analytics reports, we summarize lists based on the total number of some value such as shares, particularly if that list would otherwise be too long to display.

For lists of Top Content, we maximize performance by counting every URL that appears more than a given number of times each day in the selected date range.

If a page does not appear within this top number for a given day in the date range, that day's shares are not counted toward the total.

This sampling strategy can sometimes result in slight differences between counts, particularly for very large numbers of shares. The content detail report will always display the correct total number of events for a given time period.

What are Audience analytics?

Audience analytics are a collection of enhanced features that help publishers understand who is visiting their site, how influential they are, what intent-behaviors (such as searches) brought them to the site, and what their general interests are. This information helps publishers increase traffic by optimizing content for their audience, improving their advertising initiatives, and better understanding their visitors and social influencers in general.

Visit this report

Where do audience interests come from?

AddThis sharing tools are used on millions of domains, all over the world. As users interact with AddThis, anonymously across all of those domains, we are able to observe and determine their interest level in various types of content. We don't know who, specifically, these people are (the information is "non-personally identifying"), only that the person using that browser on that computer might like that particular topic.

By presenting this information, and how it is affected by things like sharing, we can help publishers understand what their most influential visitors care about, while still protecting their users' privacy. End-users can opt-out of this data collection at any time, ensuring that no information is collected about their anonymous interactions with AddThis sharing tools.

As this interest data is based on a large amount of anonymously aggregated data, you as a publisher will see more actionable data as your traffic levels increase.

Can I share my analytics data?

Yes. AddThis analytics data and configuration settings are organized in what we call AddThis Profiles. When you installed AddThis, we automatically created a Profile for you, or converted an older account into a Profile. To share the information in your Profile, go to Settings, and select Profiles. If you have more than one Profile, select the one you want to share. Then, scroll down to Sharing, and click Add User. Enter the email address of the person with whom you want to share your Profile. Be sure to select whether this person can make changes to your AddThis configuration, or just view Analytics reports.

Can I have more than one profile?

Yes, we introduced AddThis profiles to allow particularly our larger publishers to manage a large number of domains and configurations, across multiple teams or clients. To create an additional profile, go to Settings, and select Profiles. Select Add a Profile, and give your new profile a name. Now, you can Get AddThis code and select that new Profile to use. Then, any analytics data collected from pages with that code will be associated with that Profile. If multiple team members need access to that Profile's data, you can share your Profile with them.

If I have more then one AddThis button on a page, will that affect my analytics?

No, it won't affect your analytics.

Can I reset my analytics?

Not at this time. You can create a new AddThis account and re-install the button; this will disregard and previously collected analytics data.

Can we integrate AddThis analytics into Google Analytics & Omniture?

AddThis supports integration with Google Analytics. At this time, no we don't support integrating with Omniture – this is something that we plan on supporting in the near future.

Do shares from the AddThis Firefox Plug-in get included in my analytics report?

Yes, as long as there is an AddThis button on that page with a valid Profile ID.

I noticed a few differences in my analytics data from a previous time period; why did they change?

We process an enormous amount of data each day. We're constantly working to prevent spam and invalid shares from being counted. We’re also working hard to provide our users with new and more accurate views of their sharing data, and generally increase the performance of our analytics systems. When we update these systems or add new features, we re-process large amounts of data. As a by-product of this processing, you may see a small amount of fluctuation (typically less than 1% per data point) with respect to previous reports for the same data.

What are application keys and how do I use them?

Mobile application developers can use our SDKs to provide and track AddThis sharing in their apps. In order to correctly collect analytics data, each app must have a unique key that is associated with an AddThis profile. Each key is just a series of letters and numbers that uniquely identify each app. You can obtain and manage keys for your apps by first selecting the corresponding profile in Settings. Read more in documentation for our iOS SDK.

Browser Add-Ons & Toolbars

How do I choose my favorite services in AddThis for Firefox or Internet Explorer?

You can personalize AddThis for Firefox or Internet Explorer to display your favorite services, in any order you like. Just select Options... > Sharing Services, pick which services you would like to see, and change the order of your list using the arrows on the far right side of the form.

In AddThis for Firefox, how do I hide the toolbar and just use the navigation button menu?

AddThis for Firefox provides several different ways to customize sharing in your browser. These include:

a sharing toolbar
the original navigation toolbar button menu
a context menu (right-click in any page to share), and
a URL bar icon menu

You can choose to display any or all of these menus by going to Options... (the "wrench" menu), choosing More Options and selecting which menus you would like to use.

How do I uninstall the AddThis Firefox plugin?

Go to the Tools menu of your Firefox browser, select Uninstall... from the AddThis sub-menu.

Or, you can also uninstall the AddThis plug-in by selecting Add-ons from the Firefox Tools menu. Then, select Extensions and click the uninstall button under AddThis.

How do I uninstall the AddThis Chrome plugin?

Go to the Window menu of your Chrome browser and select "Extensions". Under the AddThis extension listing, choose "Uninstall".

How do I uninstall the AddThis IE plugin?

Go to the "Tools" for IE 7 or "Safety" for IE 8 menu on the top of your browser. Select "Manage Add-ons" to launch the IE plug-in management console. Select "All add-ons" under "Show." You should see a list of applications and browser add-ons such as toolbars. Select the plug-in you want to remove and click "Disable" to deactivate it from Internet Explorer.