'And' vs '&'

[u_rauf92]

Hi everyone

This question has been running through my mind since a few days now. Does Google recognise 'and' / '&' as the same?

Say for example my website url is: appleandorange.com and my keyword for my company is Apple & Orange. If i Focus on Apple & Orange for on-page SEO will google also recognise apple and orange ? Or will I have to on-page SEO seperately for Apple and orange?

So for instance if I keep focusing on Apple & Orange will my website appleandorange.com appear on google?

Thanks in advance

[TheeDigital]

A quick way to check for an association in Google is to search and see what is highlighted. I chose to search for "Barnes and Noble" who reside on barnesandnoble.com and whose brand is Barnes & Noble. The answer is that no, they are not associated, but that doesn't mean that your site won't show. Obviously Barnes & Noble has established themselves as a brand and will show if you search with and or &.

[RyanPurkey]

You can use both interchangeably. Search engines can parse a domain name like appleandoranges.com into apple and oranges fairly quickly with a few other signals. That's just an example though, when using whatever it is that you're trying to rank you'll need to take into consideration the strengths of the results that are currently in place: backlink profile, social presence, on-going work, etc.  Cheers!

[u_rauf92]

Dear Ryan

Appreciate your quick response and your straight forward answer!

So I should focus on optimising Apple & Oranges so when people type 'Apple and oranges' on google my website appleandoranges.com is more likely to come up?

Thanks once again

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Uzair. Per Google, most punctuation is ignored (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433) the & sign included. That said, a lot of times you'll see the & symbol in title tags due to it being shorter than 'and' and thus allowing more characters. In most cases the differences between using 'and' vs '&' are so miniscule you won't have to spend any time optimizing for them as separate entities.  Cheers!