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
-
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark.
Thanks!
-
Jen - I agree with Eli. It's best not to use the TM symbol in a URL string - it will confuse the end user when it's URL encoded and scrambled. Rather, put the mark on your pages and in images.
If you have gone through the registration process with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), you should be using the
symbol next to your mark, and not the TM symbol.
According to the Trademark FAQs on the USPTO site: http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426682
Do federal regulations govern the use of the designations "TM" or "SM" or the
symbol?
If you claim rights to use a mark, you may use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation to alert the public to your claim of a “common-law” mark. No registration is necessary to use a "TM" or "SM" symbol and you may continue to use these symbols even if the USPTO refuses to register your mark. Those symbols put people on notice that you claim rights in the mark, although common law doesn't give you all the rights and benefits of federal registration.
You may only use the federal registration symbol "
" after the USPTO actually registers a mark, not while an application is pending. And it may only be used on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the federal trademark registration and while the registration is still alive (you may not continue to use it if you don’t maintain the registration or it expires). Although there are no specific requirements on where the symbol should be placed relative to the mark, most businesses use the symbol in the upper right corner of the mark. Note: Because several foreign countries use “
” to indicate that a mark is registered in that country, use of the symbol by the holder of a foreign registration may be proper.
From another section_: There are no specific requirements on where the “
” symbol should be placed relative to the mark, but most businesses use the symbol in the upper right corner of the mark._
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff -
Jen,
I'm not sure if it will be bad based on research, but based on what you aim for in a URL (clarity, what the article is about, user experience, descriptive keywords, etc...) the TM Registered may not fit well.
Plus, be careful, your TM (if using symbols) will get changed to
(
) or
(
) in the URL - making it less user friendly to type in (let alone look at)..
Hope this Helps!
Eli Overbey
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
-
Bulk URL Removal in Webmaster Tools
One of Wordpress sites was hacked (for about 10 hours), and Google picked up 4000+ urls in the index. The site is fixed, but I'm stuck with all those urls in the index. All the urls of of the form: walkerorthodontics.com/index.php?online-payday-cash-loan.htmloncewe The only bulk removal option I could find was to remove an entire folder, but I can't do that, as it would only leave the homepage and kill off everything else. For some crazy reason, the removal tools doesn't support wildcards, so that obvious solution is right out. So, how do it get rid of 4000 results? And no, waiting around for them to 404 out of the index isn't an option.
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Old URLs Appearing in SERPs
Thirteen months ago we removed a large number of non-corporate URLs from our web server. We created 301 redirects and in some cases, we simply removed the content as there was no place to redirect to. Unfortunately, all these pages still appear in Google's SERPs (not Bings) for both the 301'd pages and the pages we removed without redirecting. When you click on the pages in the SERPs that have been redirected - you do get redirected - so we have ruled out any problems with the 301s. We have already resubmitted our XML sitemap and when we run a crawl using Screaming Frog we do not see any of these old pages being linked to at our domain. We have a few different approaches we're considering to get Google to remove these pages from the SERPs and would welcome your input. Remove the 301 redirect entirely so that visits to those pages return a 404 (much easier) or a 410 (would require some setup/configuration via Wordpress). This of course means that anyone visiting those URLs won't be forwarded along, but Google may not drop those redirects from the SERPs otherwise. Request that Google temporarily block those pages (done via GWMT), which lasts for 90 days. Update robots.txt to block access to the redirecting directories. Thank you. Rosemary One year ago I removed a whole lot of junk that was on my web server but it is still appearing in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Why xml generator is not detecting all my urls?
Hi Mozzers, After adding 3 new pages to example.com, when generating the xml sitemap, Iwasn't able to locate those 3 new url. This is the first time it is happening. I have checked the meta tags of these pages and they are fine. No meta robots setup! Any thoughts or idea why this is happening? how to fix this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS
Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs. Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?
Technical SEO | | JaredMumford0 -
Special characters in URL
Hi There, We're in the process of changing our URL structure to be more SEO friendly. Right now I'm struggling to find a good way to handle slashes that are part of a targeted keyword. For example, if I have a product page and my product title is "1/2 ct Diamond Earrings in 14K Gold" which of the following URLs is the right way to go if I'm targeting the product title as the search keyword? example.com/jewelry/1-2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/12-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/1_2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold example.com/jewelry/1%2F2-ct-diamond-earrings-in-14k-gold Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Richline_Digital0 -
Google News URL Format
Hi, We are currently redesigning our gaming website (www.totallygn.com) and one of our main goals is to get listed by Google News in future. Looking at the Google News URL requirements "The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits." How does the above affect SEO structure? I was planning on using a format such as www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review how would this compare to something like? www.totallygn.com/xbox-360/360-reviews/fifa-12-review234 Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | WalesDragon0 -
Singular vs plural in urls
In keyword research for an ecommerce site, I've found that widget, singular gets a lot more searches than widgets, plural AND is much less competitive. Is it better for SEO purposes to have the URLs (and matching title tags) in the catalog as /brass-widget.html, /steel-widget.html, etc., or /brass-widgets.html, etc.? I'm worried that a) searches for widgets will pass by the singular urls but not vice versa, and b) the singular form will strike visitors as bad grammar. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Double byte characters in the URL - best avoided?
We are doing some optimisation on sites in the APAC region, namely China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. We have set the url generator to automatically use the heading of the page in the URL which works fine for countries using Latin characters, but is causing problems, particularly in IE, when it comes to the double byte countries. For some reason, IE struggles with double byte and displays URLs in their rather ugly, coded form. Anybody got any suggestions on whether we should persist with the keyword URLs or revert to the non-descriptive URLs for the double byte countries? The reason I ask is it's a balance of SEO benefit vs not scaring IE users off with ugly URLs that look dreadful and spammy.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0