Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
-
Hi Mozzers
I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs.
Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using).
I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution?
Thanks,
Chris Captivate
-
Yes James you're referencing HTML that's incorrect
-
So basically what you're saying is that Web Design Group, which is a trusted resource on internet coding since 1999 is wrong. Here's more detail about entities:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/
The ampersand is the first character in an entity. Entities are well respected and widely used, at least as long as I've been coding web pages (since about 1997).
-
The & character is also used in Google Analytics parameters. I believe that if there were any problems they wouldn't use. I use this character only to inform the start and finish parameters.
A good example is the UTM parameters used by Google: http://www.domainname.com.br/?utm_source=yourdomain&utm_medium=algo&utm_campaign=yourcampaign&utm_content=something
If you need to include special characters as the information is interesting escape the text before sending to the server.
http://someserver.com/?param1=someinfo¶m2=another¶m3=some text using special characters such & % and more
The url can be correctly corrected using the javascript
escape()
function to convert special characters like:var param3 = 'some text using special characters such & % and more';
escape(param3);// will result some%20text%20using%20special%20characters%20such%20%26%20%25%20and%20more
So your URL will be:
..And will be corrected.
-
Never...
As James correctly pointed out the & (or ampersand) is not a good idea. However his explanation is a little incorrect.
You see URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. URLs often contain characters outside the ASCII set, therefore the URL has to be converted into a valid ASCII format.
When using unsafe ASCII characters you have to replace them with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits.
Therefore an "&" is %26 and not & which is the standard HTML character set.
Personally I would look at a way to exclude the & and just have /5-star-hotel-near-beach/ for example
-
Ampersand is used as a delimiter for an entity in standard HTML, so inserting it could lead to a validation error and failure to load the page. If you absolutely must use it in your URL, use the code: & which won't mess anything up. It's just text, so there's no reason for Google to penalize it. Under the concept of topic modeling, Google will recognize & as "and" but usually doesn't pay attention to connectors like that, so it's a non issue.
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
-
Do changing theme would cause the the seo effects?
I want to ask that i want to change my website theme does this will have any side effects on my humidifier site Seo?
Web Design | | farhankhan110 -
Html4 menu system which is seo-friendly while moving to html5
I have a complex site and very large site that we are moving to html5 as quickly as possible given our resources (long overdue) but I was wondering if anyone knew of a menuing system that would work on mobile that is seo-friendly in terms of do-follow and does not use javascript that the spiders often cannot read. We need code/css that works for both the menu and for select boxes. I know few write such code anymore, and the idea is dated, but it is a temporary stopgap while we move to HTML5 when such tools are available. Does any such code, free or commercial, exist anymore? Thank you in advance as this is very important in terms of not usuing too much mobile real estate with side menus... Best regards
Web Design | | gheh20130 -
Mobile SEO vs. Usability - SinglePlatform
I have a restaurant client that we're setting up with SinglePlatform.com to distribute their menu and make sure all of the restaurant sites have updated information for their business. As part of SinglePlatform's service, they offer a mobile site. Normally we would just create a mobile site and make sure that it's optimized but this client isn't ready to invest in a customized mobile site yet. The mobile site we can get with SinglePlatform is very simple. Call, Menu, Address, View Full Website, Photos, General Info. I know this would make it much easier for mobile users to find information and contact them but it's not mobile best practices. Whatever main page they land on would redirect them to the home page of the mobile site (i.e. not a 1 to 1). We also won't have any Google Analytics information for this site. The question comes down to usability or SEO? I'm leaning toward the mobile site for now and sell them on a customized solution later. I guess I'm just looking for some verification or any insight. ZRVbARv
Web Design | | JaredDetroit0 -
Ecommerce SEO - product sort order
Hi, I've been trying to find the answer to this in google but having no luck. In the current era, is it damaging to have products ordered randomly in an ecommerce website? Also, how long would you suggest is a good length of time to establish your natural rank? Ive launched and still work on several succesful ecommerce sites, but have recently launched a completely new venture - brand new url, brand new site and it has been live for around 5 weeks now, and although it is being found in search, it isnt doing as well as i'd like using the moz pro tools ive picked up some issues and have in the last few days tweaked page titles, added 'nofollow' to all my filters, added content etc, so I feel as though ive reset the clock. the site (it's an adult site by the way) is www.lovesauce.co.uk - would appreciate some feedback from the pro's
Web Design | | tom.dollar0 -
Video SEO?
What is the best way to get SEO benefits from video? Which service is best? YouTube, Vimeo or any other? Or is best just to upload direct to my own site? But then how would I handle mobile devices i.e. iPad and iPhone? How does one go about marketing a video? Thanks
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Javascript changing URL - Thoughts?
So, our developer just created a player at the bottom of this site I work for. It's not really important what it is. The thing is, when you go to our home page now, the javascript changes the url from www.site.com to www.site.com/home It's not actually redirected or anything (no 301, it's just the javascript doing this), but I'm worried that if someone links back to our site they're going to surely pull that URL to point back to, which is wrong. Also, when you go to a category, the URL changes from www.site.com/category to www.site.com/home#category. Again, it's not a redirect but I'm still worried people will link back to this since it's on the entire site now... I'm suggesting that we turn off this new feature until we find a workaround. I just wanted to confirm with you guys that this is best. Thanks
Web Design | | poolguy0 -
SEO ethical practice in question
A family friend asked me to take a look at her website. www.designsbymaida.com First thing i noticed is what seemed a 301 redirect or a forward to http://funktionaldesignstudios.com/dbm-old/ So her site is hosted with what it looks like, in his site(funktonaldesigns). What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO. My thought is that he is boosting his domain name. He is getting the link juice. Thanks for the insight and help.
Web Design | | QualityHosting1