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    4. Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)

    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.

    Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)

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    • LabeliumUSA
      LabeliumUSA last edited by

      G'd everyone,

      I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO.  Eg. é , ë ô in words

      Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine?

      • how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index  & Crawl

      • Best Practices when it comes to URLs -

      • uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where?

      • any disadvantage using special characters

      • Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience.

      Thanks heaps,

      Amy

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

        Google handles special characters in URLs, titles, etc. just fine now - a page like http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_de_Versailles uses the proper accent on the a, and is displayed properly in modern browsers as well as in Google's results.

        There should be no impact on rankings, although it's safe to say that best practice would include using the proper characters, as they certainly benefit usability.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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