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.
Do search engines understand special/foreign characters?
-
We carry a few brands that have special foreign characters, e.g., Kühl, Lolë, but do search engines recognize special unicode characters? Obviously we would want to spend more energy optimizing keywords that potential customers can type with a keyboard, but is it worthwhile to throw in some encoded keywords and anchor text for people that copy-paste these words into a search?
Do search engines typically equate special characters to their closest English equivalent, or are "Kuhl", "Kühl" and "Kühl" three entirely different terms?
-
Thanks Tom.
While it seems that search engines generally handle these characters well I still had to ask because I did two Google searches: One for "lole" and another for "lolë", and I got very different results. On the first search my website came up on SERP page one but on the second one we were nowhere to be found on any of the first 15 pages.
Whats more, every one of the first 10 SERP pages or so contained at least one instance of the character with an accent in the title, description, or within the on-page copy. So it seems that special characters and regular ascii characters are not one in the same, or at least they are not weighted the same.
I do have to agree with you on the fact that most users will not go through the trouble entering Alt codes on their search bars. On the other hand, the fact that we barely register on SERPs for the company's DBA name might be cause for some concern.
-
Hi David,
Google/Bing etc. have very few problems recognising such characters in the Latin alphabet. It looks like you are mainly concerned with umlauts, which Google handles intelligently. For example...
-
Google will identify the difference between a search for "Küchen" (kitchens in German) and "Kuchen" (cake in German) and offer up relevant results. This is true in Google US and Google UK, not just localised Googles.
-
Search suggestions work just fine with these characters, and even with the standardised way of rewriting them when there is no accessible way to type them (for umlauts this is with an e following the letter). For example, in Google.de, type "Kue" and you will be given the suggestion "Küchen".
You are mainly concerned with brands, which muddies the waters a little because many people in English speaking markets won't bother/know how to type the umlauts. However, Google normally handles this well and recognises the intent.
I would recommend you ensure you consistent use the brand name with the foreign characters, as intended. Google/Bing and co. shouldn't have any problems. Which HTML encoding you use is by the by, in my opinion, as long as the characters are rendering correctly.
-
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
-
Suddenly keywords Disappeared from Google Search Results
Hello Guys Please help me, suddenly all of my site's keywords are disappeared from google search result, most of keywords are no.1 on google but today after 6pm i see the traffic decreasing and when i search my keywords there is no any keywords in search result. Only homepage keyword is showing. Please Help what is Happening with me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mianazeem4180 -
Search console validation taking a long time?
Hello! I did something dumb back in the beginning of September. I updated Yoast and somehow noindexed a whole set of custom taxonomy on my site. I fixed this and then asked Google to validate the fixes on September 20. Since then they have gotten through only 5 of the 64 URLS.....is this normal? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something that I should be doing. Thank you! ^_^
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | angelamaemae0 -
Uppercase/Lowercase Reading As Duplicate Permalinks
I cannot figure out if this is an actual SEO issue or just a crawl reader error. I use Screaming Frog to crawl my site and use their SEO features. When I look at page titles and duplicates it shows all our pages twice... some with 1 letter capitalized and the other not. I don't REALLY have duplicate permalinks do I? I also noticed when I use some open site explorers and paste in both permalinks the specs will show for the permalink that's all lowercase but it won't find anything for the "duplicate" permalink that is capitalized. Below I included a few screenshots. Thank you Moz Fam! Q6866xZNUfpF cxXacVajCBGb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
How to get local search volumes?
Hi Guys, I want to get search volumes for "carpet cleaning" for certain areas in Sydney, Australia. I'm using this process: Choose to ‘Search for new keyword and ad group ideas’. Enter the main keywords regarding your product / service Remove any default country targeting Specify your chosen location (s) by targeting specific cities / regions Click to ‘Get ideas’ The problem is none of the areas, even popular ones (like north sydney, surry hills, newtown, manly) are appearing and Google keyword tool, no matches. Is there any other tools or sources of data i can use to get accurate search volumes for these areas? Any recommendations would be very much appreciated. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Redirect wordpress from /%post_id%/%postname%/ to /blog/%postname%/
Hi what is the code to redirect wordpress blog from site.com/%post_id%/%postname%/ to site.com/blog/%postname%/ We are moving the site to a new server and new url structure. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
How to maximize CTR from Google image search?
I'm getting good, solid growth in my Google SERPs and Google search traffic now, but I do notice that 70% of my high ranking search results are images and the CTR on those is only 3-4%. All my images are illustrative and highly relevant to my travel blog, but I guess that hardly matters unless they get CTR so people see them in context. Has anyone seen or done any good research on what makes people click through on Google Image Search results? What are the key factors? How do you optimize for click-through? Is it better to watermark your images or overlay label them to increase likelihood of click-through? Thanks, Tony FYI the travel blog in question is www.asiantraveltips.com and a relevant Google search where I rank highly is "songkran 2016 phuket".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Intro to programming/coding for seo
Hello, I am currently a SEO and am looking for an Intro to programming/coding course to help me implement various technical SEO tasks for my clients and the business-as the programming dept will not help me, as they do not see the value of SEO. Could someone pls recommend an online course that would introduce me to basic concepts and also specifically, the information that would help me to enhance our SEO? I would also like to better understand APIs. Thanks so much in advance for your help! Lauren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Incorrect URL shown in Google search results
Can anyone offer any advice on how Google might get the url which it displays in search results wrong? It currently appears for all pages as: <cite>www.domainname.com › Register › Login</cite> When the real url is nothing like this. It should be: www.domainname.com/product-type/product-name. This could obviously affect clickthroughs. Google has indexed around 3,000 urls on the site and they are all like this. There are links at the top of the page on the website itself which look like this: Register » Login » which presumably could be affecting it? Thanks in advance for any advice or help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wagada0