Table fo Contents adds number to HTML anchor

[Rory]

I’m hoping someone can shed some light on this…

I’ve been creating table of contents manually for years and decided to try out this TOC plugin.

The one thing I can’t get my head around is why it automatically adds a number to the start of the HTML anchor. For example, you have a <H2> with the title “Heading” this TOC plugin then adds a HTML anchor like “0-Heading”.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t this tell Google that this is some sort of list instead of being a generic Table of contents? I’m concerned that this may affect Sitelinks showing up in SERPs for our articles.

Any info would be helpful.

Many Thanks,
Rory

[Alexis]

Hi @DJTechReviews ! The numbers are added deliberately to the anchors to ensure the anchor links would still work properly even if two or more headings have the same text. The anchors are generated while the headings are being edited within the editor, and comparing headings with each other to check for duplicates (and rename the subsequent headings with the same text) would slow the editor when more headings are present. Doing neither would go against existing recommendations for HTML syntax and lead to the second (and further) headings with the same text becoming inaccessible from the Table of Contents.