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.
Will properly encoded & signs hurt or help me?
-
Hello friends,
Will properly encoding a url hurt my ranking after having it improperly coded? I want to change my & symbols to &
If I go from:
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=coolTo:
http://www.example.com/product.php?attachment=pins&model=coolWill I get hurt if I make the leap?
-
Properly encoding a URL will not hurt your ranking. In fact, it is a good practice to properly encode URLs because it can help ensure that they are properly interpreted by web browsers and other systems.
The & symbol is used to separate parameters in a URL. When a URL is not properly encoded, the & symbol can be interpreted as the start of a new parameter, which can cause the URL to be incorrectly interpreted. By encoding the & symbol as &, you can ensure that the URL is properly interpreted and that all of the parameters are correctly associated with the correct values.
There is no risk of being penalized or otherwise negatively impacted in terms of search rankings by properly encoding a URL. It is simply good practice to ensure that your URLs are properly formatted and can be correctly interpreted by the systems that use them.
-
Thanks! I dodged a bullet. I was going to change all my urls with an & to & the other day, but I decided to ask here first. I'm glad I did. These are very old urls too, maybe 15 years old. I'll just let it be, they rank great.
-
Changing URLs in any way will hurt your rankings - the process of redirecting the old URL to the new one causes a loss of equity which then has to gradually be rebuilt.
That said, for new URLs, I would say the only relevant consideration is how the URL will appear in search results and browsers as readable, or not, to human users.
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
-
Deleting Tags Properly - Advice Needed
I have over 18,000 tags. Needless to say, most of them are relatively useless to the user and generate no traffic, while cluttering the site. (I use Wordpress.) My plan is to delete tags, but I want to do so safely as to not accumulate website errors. (Tags pages are noindexed.) What process should I take here? Here was my basic plan (any help is appreciated). 1. Find irrelevant tags that are connected with hardly any posts. 2. Go into the post, and remove said tag. 3. Now, with a tag having a 'count' of 0, I go into Tags, and delete it. Safe, right? But now it seems those tag pages just turned into 404s "Uh-oh...Page not found!" Where do I go from here? Create 410's? Thanks Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Changing menus regularly - will this impact SEO
We are working on an internal project, where the website owner is thinking of making regular changes to one or two items on the top level menu. Assuming they redirect the original pages or navigate to them in other ways, is there any other impact on SEO to changing the menu structure? I assume they'd submit new sitemaps after each change. Many thanks Fiona
Technical SEO | | fionah0 -
Shopping Carts & Sub Domains
I was hoping someone could guide me in making the correct decision regarding integrating my existing domain with a hosted shopping cart. I have an existing website to promote my bricks and mortar retail operation and am expanding into web retailing. I will be using one of the major hosted shopping carts. What is the best way to join the two components from an SEO perspective? Have the cart as a sub domain of my main site, or move my existing domain name to be hosted by the cart provider and have both components operate under the same general domain? I have read arguments that putting your cart within a sub domain is not a good idea because any clout of the pre-existing domain will not be shared with the sub domain; that they will be treated as two separate sites. I have also read that using a sub domain is a good idea being that the content focus of the main domain (marketing and blogs) is different form the focus of the sub domain (product sales), and that the two components would benefit form earning their own rankings undiluted by the other. And, I have also read that search engines are getting good at being able to deduce that an eCommerce sub domain is legitimate extension of a content intensive main domain, and that they treat the two components as a combined whole. What is the truth? Which is the better way to go? Any guidance would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MEI1520 -
Do rss feeds help seo?
If we put relevant RSS feeds on a site, will it help the SEO value? Years ago, I shied away from RSS feeds because they slowed the site down and I didn't like relying on them. However, the past couple years, the Internet has become better, especially in Alaska.
Technical SEO | | manintights280 -
HELP: Wrong domain showing up in Google Search
So i have this domain (1)devicelock.com and i also had this other domain (2)ntutility.com, the 2nd domain was an old domain and it is not in use anymore. But when i search for devicelock on Google, the homepage devicelock.com does not exist. Only ntutility.com comes up. I asked one of the developer how the redirect is happening from the old domain to the new one and he told me its through a DNS forward. And there is no way to have an .htacess file to set up a 301 instead. Please help!
Technical SEO | | Devicelock0 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Cyrillic letter in URL - Encoding
Hi all We are launching our site in Russia. As far as I can see by searching Google all sites have URLs in latin letters. Is there a special reason for this? - It seems that cyrillic letters also work. My technical staff says that it might give some encoding problems. Can anyone give me some insight into this? Thanks in advance.. / Kenneth
Technical SEO | | Kennethskonto0