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

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?

    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.

    Is there any negative SEO effect of having comma's in URL's?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    3
    3359
    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.
    • RichBestSEO
      RichBestSEO last edited by

      Hello,

      I have a client who has a large ecommerce website. Some category names have been created with comma's in - which has meant that their software has automatically generated URL's with comma's in for every page that comes beneath the category in the site hierarchy.

      eg. 1 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/

      eg. 2 : http://shop.deliaonline.com/store/music,-dvd-and-games/dvds-and-blu_rays/action-and-adventure/

      etc...

      I know that URL's with comma's in look a bit ugly! But is there 'any' SEO reason why URL's with comma's in are any less effective?

      Kind Regs,

      RB

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • gcdtechnologies
        gcdtechnologies last edited by

        Commas in the URL aren't necessarily at an SEO disadvantage. It might be a good idea to change them for better usability and better CTRs, but as Russ says, I don't think this is an urgent task.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • HiveDigitalInc
          HiveDigitalInc last edited by

          I have never seen any evidence that commas are negative, however usability can often drive the social factors that may play more and more a role in the future. I wouldn't make it a priority to change those URLs now, but when the time comes (perhaps with a redesign of the website), it would be worth your while to go ahead and remove them.

          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

          • SearchStan

            Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?

            I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
            https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
            1
          • Searchout

            SEO effect of URL with subfolder versus parameters?

            I'll make this quick and simple.  Let's say you have a business located in several cities.  You've built individual pages for each city (linked to from a master list of your locations). For SEO purposes is it better to have the URL be a subfolder, or a parameter off of the home page URL: https://www.mysite.com/dallas  which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/dallas/index.php or http://www.mysite.com/?city=dallas  which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/index.php?city=dallas

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Searchout
            0
          • seoaustin

            Old URL that has been 301'd for months appearing in SERPs

            We created a more keyword friendly url with dashes instead of underscores in December.  That new URL is in Google's Index and has a few links to it naturally.  The previous version of the URL (with underscores) continues to rear it's ugly head in the SERPs, though when you click on it you are 301'd to the new url.  The 301 is implemented correctly and checked out on sites such as http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php. Has anyone else experienced such a thing? I understand that Google can use it's discretion on pages, title tags, canonicals, etc.... But I've never witnessed them continue to show an old url that has been 301'd to a new for months after discovery or randomly.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin
            0
          • Motava

            Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords

            For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
            ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63‎
            META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
            www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120‎
            META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
            www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
            META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
            mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17‎
            META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27‎‎ There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
            0
          • BbeS

            How does the use of Dynamic meta tags effect SEO?

            I'm evaluating a new client site which was built buy another design firm. My question is they are dynamically creating meta tags and I'm concerned that it is hurting their SEO. When I view the page source this is what I see. <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">keywords</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">keywordsGoHere</a>" content="" /> <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" id="<a class="attribute-value">descriptionGoesHere</a>" content="" /> <title id="<a class="attribute-value">titleGoesHere</a>">title> To me it looks like the tags are not being added to the page, however the title is showing when you view it in a browser and if use a spider view tool, it sees the title. I'm guess it is being called from a DB. So I'm a little concerned though that the search engines are not really seeing the title and description. I'm not worried about the keywords tag. Can anyone shed some light on how this might work? Why it might not being showing the text for the description in the page code and if that will hurt SEO? Thanks for the help!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BbeS
            0
          • mkhGT

            Do UTM URL parameters hurt SEO backlink value?

            Does www.example.com and www.example.com/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Press+Release&utm_campaign=Google have the same SEO backlink value? I would assume that Google knows the difference.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkhGT
            0
          • jlane9

            How to prevent 404's from a job board ?

            I have a new client with a job listing board on their site. I am getting a bunch of 404 errors as they delete the filled jobs. Question: Should we leave the the jobs pages up for extra content and entry points to the site and put a notice like this job has been filled, please search our other job listings ? Or should I no index - no follow these pages ? Or any other suggestions - it is an employment agency site. Overall what would be the best practice going forward - we are looking at probably 20 jobs / pages per month.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane9
            0
          • Sayers

            How do you implement dynamic SEO-friendly URLs using Ajax without using hashbangs?

            We're building a new website platform and are using Ajax as the method for allowing users to select from filters. We want to dynamically insert elements into the URL as the filters are selected so that search engines will index multiple combinations of filters. We're struggling to see how this is possible using symfony framework. We've used www.gizmodo.com as an example of how to achieve SEO and user-friendly URLs but this is only an example of achieving this for static content. We would prefer to go down a route that didn't involve hashbangs if possible. Does anyone have any experience using hashbangs and how it affected their site? Any advice on the above would be gratefully received.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers
            1

          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.