URL Fragments (# Hash Sign in url's)

Concern

Based on this article in 2017, SEO professionals started recommending that website owners avoid the use of # signs in urls of websites. Google: Stop Using URL Fragments

Explained

The above article was a misrepresentation of the Google interview. What it is saying is that they will not index a separate page if there is a hash sign in the url. They are not saying they will not index the page that has references to sections of the same page.  

Examples of usage

• In this Twitter thread, the representative from Google states:

" We'll support the hash for the foreseeable future (others use them too), but we'll likely render rather than use escaped-fragment."

• On the Google Web Fundamentals site:

Updated Feb 12, 2019 "By using the #syntax to update the url (window.location = "#somestate"), and listening to the window.onhashchange> event you can use the browser's own history stack to manage changes in the application state, allow the user to use their hardware back buttons, or ..."

• Googles Web Toolkit states in the mechanism introduction

"GWT's basic premise is to keep track of the application's "internal state" in the url fragment identifier"

Conclusion

If the usage of a hash sign is anchor different sections of the same page there is no indexability issue.

However, if you are using hash signs to load a completely different page with the same url, then this is a problem as described by a google representative on Twitter

"if page.php#a loads different content than page.php#b,then we generally won't be able to index that separately. Use "?" or "/""

Here is a website that is improperly using the hash signs to serve different data for each page.