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.
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
-
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there?
Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
-
Thanks that was very helpful!
-
I performed the following Google.com search "SE test insite:seomoz". The result is the page found at: http://www.seomoz.org/q/se-test-jon-goldberg-123-91-389412345678951234567
The search result appears with the complete title including the full appended " | SEOmoz Q&A" added to the end. All characters appear as entered with none converted.
Do these results answer your question?
-
I am pretty sure the answer is going to be no. I think the SEs will see the hard-coded characters as what you entered and wont convert them. There is probably a way to get the characters you entered recognized, but I am not sure what the process would be.
As a test, I made a new Q&A. The title is exactly 57 characters. SEOmoz appends " | SEOmoz Q&A" to the end of each title which is an additional 13 characters. We can check later when the page gets indexed and see what happened.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/se-test-jon-goldberg-123-91-389412345678951234567
-
Sorry for not being more specific. I meant, is it ok to use { in place of { and [ in place of [. I am more concerned with using hard coded special characters having a negative impact on rankings than title length. I've read that Bing tells webmasters not to use <>{} but I've seen elsewhere that these are ok on Google. Would hard coding these make their use acceptable on all SEs?
-
Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
Are you referring to foreign characters? Titles such as "Здравейте българи"?
They each count as one character.
I am basing that understanding on an example I located. When I search the above page in Google the 2nd result shows a title with 60+ visible characters. When I view page source on Google, I see the very long encoded characters which far exceed the 70 character title limit.
Example:<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com/Здравейте-българи/" />
I know Roger complains during SEOmoz crawls. I wish Roger could be as smart as the Google crawler
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
-
Adding CTAs in Meta Descriptions
Whats peoples opinions about putting Call To Cations CTAs in Meta Descriptions, and does this ever occur a Google penalty, as it can sometimes look a bit clickbait. For example I am looking at a site which currently has this meta description Meta Description: For more information on our sustainable, natural office furniture, click here to get in contact. Is this kind of description ranking unfriendly, Ive seen them used a lot but IM not a big fan of this myself. Any thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Donsimong1 -
Using Bold text for keywords
Hello I am updating an old e-commerce website of mine and many keywords are in bold - shall I remove the bold tag or keep them there? This is for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Page Title Length
Hi Gurus, I understand that it is a good practice is to use 50-60 characters for the a page title length. Google appends my brand name to the end of each title (15 characters including spaces) it index. Do I need to count what google adds as part of the maximum recommended length? i.e.
On-Page Optimization | | SunnyMay
is the maximum 50-60 characters + the 15 characters brand name Google adds to the end of the title or 50-60 including the addition? Many thanks!
Lev0 -
Using Schema markup for Feefo reviews
I am a little confused about whether or not it is ok to use Schema markup with reviews collected through Feefo. We use Feefo to collect reviews from our customers and these get displayed on our website. We get service ratings as well as product ratings through Feefo. My question is: Is it ok to use Schema markup for these? I would have thought they would fall under 3rd party reviews, but this article from the Feefo website seems to suggest that it would be ok to use markup in the way they recommend. Can anyone confirm how Google handles review markup like this? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | ViviCa10 -
Is it OK to shorten your brand name in your title tags
If your title tag is over 55 characters, is it generally OK or good practice to abbreviate your brand name (at the end of the title tag) for the sake of the other keywords in the tag?
On-Page Optimization | | AliMac261 -
Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Hi Guys, I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisation I've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! 😐 I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content. Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags? Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?! Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here? Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost0 -
Colons in title tag?
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character? Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags? To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
On-Page Optimization | | kcourtem0 -
Selling Products with a similar meta description
Wondering if anyone can help when selling similar products with very similar meta description and product descriptions in general. Have around 500 products - a lot of products have around 10-20 products which are very similar only different is sizes and a maybe a few lines of text if that. Is this a problem in search engines? How does other ecommerce stores selling similar products solve this problem...
On-Page Optimization | | royRR0