Use of the tilde in URLs
-
I just signed up for SEOMoz and sent my site through the first crawl. I use the tilde in my rewritten URLs. This threw my entire site into the Notice section 301 (permanent redirect) since each page redirects to the exact URL with the ~, not the %7e.
I find conflicting information on the web - you can use the tilde in more recent coding guidelines where you couldn't in the old.
It would be a huge thing to change every page in my site to use an underscore instead of a tilde int he URL. If Google is like SEOMoz and is 301 redirecting every page on the site, then I'll do it, but is it just an SEOMoz thing?
I ran my site through Firebug and and all my pages show the 200 response header, not the 301 redirect.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
-
Thanks for all the advice! I realized that Google doesn't care about the tilde -- or at least is not doing the same redirect as SEOMoz. Recently one of my older sitemaps was flagged by Google with errors because too many of the files were redirecting. All of my sitemaps would be flagged if pages were redirecting on a wide scale.
My pages generally rank in the top 5 in Google and maybe losing the tilde would get me to #1, so I'll keep it in mind for the future. Thanks again for the help.
-
We use tildes pretty heavily on our new site. They seem to be okay with Google. However I did not want to use them because some foreign keyboards do not include the character... like Mexico.
So... do folks in Mexico type in our URLs by hand? Probably not common... but it is a potential problem. It is missing from other keyboards as well.
We use the tilde because we think it helps break up words we do not want to be seen as "together" in a string. All my product URLs have the product name, separated by dashes, then we use the tilde then comes the product number. We think it may help Google see the product title as a complete string and not include the product number. Not sure if it works or not.
-
Tildes are okay these days, but 'unsafe'.
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/rfc/2396/full.html#2.3
Tilde was (begrudgingly) added to the unreserved character list a while ago, so Google should treat them fine without encoding.
However, if you can avoid using them I would, so leave the old addresses but from now on I'd use a hyphen (in preference to an underscore, still) instead of a tilde if you can.
-
Hi,
Since this is really about the way that the tool works, the quickest and most accurate way of getting the correct answer would be to email help@seomoz.org.
That being said, avoiding special characters would be our company's preferred option. This thread from Google Webmaster Central would be worth a read.
Sha
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Using Weglot on wordpress (errors)
Good day to you all, Does anyone have experience of the errors being pulled up by Moz about the utility of the weglot plugin on Wordpress? Moz is pulling up URLs such as: https://www.ibizacc.com/es/chapparal-2/?wg-choose-original=false These are classified under "redirect issues" and 99% of the pages are with the ?wg-choose parameter in the URL. Is this having an actual negative impact on my search or is it something more Moz related being highlighted. Any advice be appreciated and a resolution .. Im thinking I could exclude this parameter.
Moz Pro | | alwaysbeseen0 -
How to use the Basic SERP to figure out what keywords to target
I'm looking at the SERP report trying to figure out what keywords I should try to rank for and I am having difficulty understanding if I could be competitive in the space. For example I have a new website that has a PA1 and DA1 rank I plan on developing great content and then working on securing quality backlinks for that content. In order to start this process I'm doing my keyword research and I am finding keywords, both short and longtail that I would like to target via Google Keyword Planner. I'm punching them in to see the competition and SERP. This is where I fall short. How do I use this information to identify or rule out what to pursue. I guess I am looking for some criteria or guide to help me begin to figure out or filter out what is the best keyword to pursue that will give me the best odds of success. If anyone can help me I would be eternally greatfull. We are a small company (startup) and it is up to me to make this work. YES - I have read everything that I can find - guides, and I have not run accross an answer. Thanks in advance
Moz Pro | | DDWeddings1 -
Major Drop in URLs that Received Organic Search Visits
Hi there! I can't figure out this issue. We had a major drop in URLS receiving organic search visits (according to Koz) yet our traffic hasn't seemed to drop in correlation. Our site had a major issue at the end of may (*hence the drop in search traffic) but it seems to have recovered, yet URLs that Received Organic Search Visits has dropped dramatically. I've looked at Google updates but can't seem to find anything, what am I missing? NVun4Wq
Moz Pro | | DotP0 -
Moz tools are returning "url is inaccessible"
Hello everyone, I have been trying to use the on page grader tool and I have also tried to do a site crawl test, and both tools have come back with a "Sorry, but that URL is inaccessible" error. This has not been a problem before. Any ideas why this is happening eg what is blocking it. The url is www.livinghouse.co.uk any help for a novice would be appreciated. PS. I have had another tool also not giving any results, so I assume its something on the site which is blocking the tools. Could this also block Google? Thanks Giles
Moz Pro | | livinghouse0 -
Using Keyword Difficulty Report along with OSE to calculate SEO Pricing?
Has anyone thought of or created a algorithm or Excel function that uses the results from the Keyword Difficulty Report percentage of difficulty and SERP ranking analysis set against potential client's own OSE rankings to come up with an estimated SEO pricing tool?
Moz Pro | | easystreetint0 -
I don't get what a dynamic URL is?
I have a whole bunch of them and I have no idea how I created them. I just make titles, that's it. Nothin' fancy.
Moz Pro | | annasus0 -
How do I get the Page Authority of individual URLs in my exported (CSV) crawl reports?
I need to prioritize fixes somehow. It seems the best way to do this would be to filter my exported crawl report by the Page Authority of each URL with an error/issue. However, Page Authority doesn't seem to be included in the crawl report's CSV file. Am I missing something?
Moz Pro | | Twilio0 -
Can I see backlinks to a specific URL, not including redirects?
Does SEOMoz have a tool that allows me to see backlinks to a specific URL sans redirected URLs? So, URL is www.website.com/search. www.website.com redirects to www.website.com/search and I want to see how many people have linked to the /search, the resulting URL. Thanks for any help! Erin
Moz Pro | | ErinTM0