Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?

    Technical SEO
    3
    4
    2620
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • BPIAnalytics
      BPIAnalytics last edited by

      Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword?  Fox ex:

      Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA).

      Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)?  Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • LinkoPlus
        LinkoPlus last edited by

        I have the same question about inserting parentheses for a keyword like this: (Cannabidiol)

        I do believe Google bot can crawl and index correctly the word "Cannabidiol" even if it's inside parentheses and even if it's a meta tag (title or description). Is there anybody who could test this by optimizing a page with a focus keyword used in parentheses and had good ranking for that keyword (without parentheses)?

        Thanks

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BPIAnalytics
          BPIAnalytics @ufmedia last edited by

          Thanks Ryan, that's what I thought.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • ufmedia
            ufmedia last edited by

            Assuming this is on-page copy and not a title tag, then I'd say you're fine.

            BPIAnalytics 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • jarydcat1

              Merge 2 websites into one, using a non-existing, new domain.

              I need to merge https://www.WebsiteA.com and https://www.WebsiteB.com to a fresh new domain (with no content) https://www.WebsiteC.com. I want to do it the best way to keep existing SEO juice. Website A is the companies home page and built with Wordpress Website B is the company product page and built with Wordpress Website C will be the new site containing both website A and B, utilizing Wordpress also. What is the best way to do this? I have research a lot and keep hitting walls on how to do it. It's a little trickier because it's two different domains going to a brand new domain. Thanks

              Technical SEO | | jarydcat1
              0
            • Deacyde

              Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?

              Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?

              Technical SEO | | Deacyde
              0
            • capmartin85

              When you change your domain, How much time do I have to wait for google to return the traffic used to have?

              Hello. 20 days ago, I changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com doing redirect 301 to all urls, and I started to loose rankings since that moment. I was wondering if changing it back could be the solutions, but some experts recommend me not to do that, because it could be worse. Right now I receave almost 50% of traffic I used to receave before, and I have done a lot of linkbuilding strategies to recover but nothing have worked until now. Even though I notified google of this change and I send again my new sitemap, I don't see that have improve my situation in any aspects, and I still see in webmastertools search stats from my last website (the website who used to be uclasificados.com before the change). What should I do to recover faster?

              Technical SEO | | capmartin85
              0
            • Zachary_Russell

              Genesis WP Theme H1 Tag not properly Used?

              I am in the process of redesigning my website, and I have been working on the Genesis framework a lot lately, so I used the Genesis framework to make my new site. The URL is http://protechig.com As I look at the H1 on the page (homepage only, every other page has solid h1s from an SEO perspective.) The first thing that I see is that the home page H1 is a links (to protech's home page). The second thing that I see is the the title text is replaced with an image (my logo) and there is a text-indent:-99999; and overflow:hiden; I just want to know from an SEO perspective if this is okay, and, if it isn't, what I could/should to to rectify it. Thanks Zach

              Technical SEO | | Zachary_Russell
              0
            • SAMarketing

              Can you mark up a page using Schema.org and Facebook Open Graph?

              Is it possible to use both Schema.org and Facebook Open Graph for structured data markup? On the Google Webmaster Central blog, they say, "you should avoid mixing the formats together on the same web page, as this can confuse our parsers." Source - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-schemaorg-search-engines.html

              Technical SEO | | SAMarketing
              1
            • k3nn3dy3

              How to generate a visual sitemap using sitemap.xml

              Are there any tools (online preferably) which will take a sitemap.xml file and generate a visual site map? Seems like an obvious thing to do, but can't find any simple tools for this?

              Technical SEO | | k3nn3dy3
              0
            • Martijn_Scheijbeler

              Using Schema.org: Product or Event as the schema type?

              Hello, Most of you heard from the launch of the new format for microdata: Schema.org and my question is about the different types of Schema they provide. Our websites provide an overview of courses, visitors can search/filter training courses and most important: read peer reviews. Until now we formatted (the source) of those courses with the schema type "Product" because it allows us to provide search engines with metadata about reviews via the "Aggregrated Rating". Recently we updated the information about courses, to also provide start dates and locations to users, just like the schema type for: "Events". Because we would like to provide search engines also with both types of data I would like to know your opinion. Schema.org looks like not to support the Aggregated Rating for Events and vice versa for Startdates/Locations for the Product type. And combining the two Schema types also does not looks like an option because we can't put them on the same level like it should be. So what would you recommend to use for kind of schema type(s), are we able to use the 'Product' type next to the 'Event' type and so to combine them? Thanks a lot!

              Technical SEO | | Martijn_Scheijbeler
              0
            • Red_Mud_Rookie

              How to use overlays without getting a Google penalty

              One of my clients is an email subscriber-led business offering deals that are time sensitive and which expire after a limited, but varied, time period. Each deal is published on its own URL and in order to drive subscriptions to the email, an overlay was implemented that would appear over the individual deal page so that the user was forced to subscribe if they wished to view the details of the deal. Needless to say, this led to the threat of a Google penalty which _appears (fingers crossed) _to have been narrowly avoided as a result of a quick response on our part to remove the offending overlay. What I would like to ask you is whether you have any safe and approved methods for capturing email subscribers without revealing the premium content to users before they subscribe? We are considering the following approaches: First Click Free for Web Search - This is an opt in service by Google which is widely used for this sort of approach and which stipulates that you have to let the user see the first item they click on from the listings, but can put up the subscriber only overlay afterwards. No Index, No follow - if we simply no index, no follow the individual deal pages where the overlay is situated, will this remove the "cloaking offense" and therefore the risk of a penalty? Partial View - If we show one or two paragraphs of text from the deal page with the rest being covered up by the subscribe now lock up, will this still be cloaking? I will write up my first SEOMoz post on this once we have decided on the way forward and monitored the effects, but in the meantime, I welcome any input from you guys.

              Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.