Use of + in url good or bad?
-
Hi,
I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ?Thanks!
-
Our site uses the "+" and is has never hurt our rankings - we've held many #1 positions in Google. If I had to start the site all over again I'd use the dash instead but if you have pages that have been around for a while I wouldn't worry about it.
-
Thanks! All great answers, really helpful!
-
I agree with everyone here, go with "-". Take a day and rewrite all of your urls that are not using "-". Any other symbol usage can be problematic.
-
Yup better to use "-".
The + sign along with the & and % operands can be problematic for spiders and in some cases browsers too.
-
I would get those re-written to dashes for a few different reasons:
- Dashes are known as the best way to separate terms in URLS
- IMO dashes are easier to read by the user, and easier to remember thus more user friendly (just my opinion though no data behind this)
- Plus signs are often used in URL encoding or in query strings, both of which are not great for users, and both of which have been thought of in the past to look somewhat "off putting" to search engines compared to dashes.
So while it might be a pain I would say go to dashes.
-
Use "-" instead of "+"
Here is an article I always have bookmarked for URL Structure, even though it is from 2006, it is a good source of info from Rand.
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
-
Does the URL structure matter?
I have a blog on entertainment. does the url structure matter to rank my blog and iam also facing the issue of indexing of my blog. visit and check this if i need further changes.
Technical SEO | | Hammad784540 -
John Mueller says don't use Schema as its not working yet but I get markup conflicts using Google Mark-up
I watched recently John Mueller's Google Webmaster Hangout [DEC 5th]. In hit he mentions to a member not to use Schema.org as it's not working quite yet but to use Google's own mark-up tool 'Structured Data Markup Helper'. Fine this I have done and one of the tags I've used is 'AUTHOR'. However if you use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool in GWMT you get an error saying the following Error: Page contains property "author" which is not part of the schema. Yet this is the tag generated by their own tool. Has anyone experienced this before? and if so what action did you take to rectify it and make it work. As it stands I'm considering just removing this tag altogether. Thanks David cqbsdbunpicv8s76dlddd1e8u4g
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
How to fix these unwanted URLs?
Right now i have wordpress, one page website, but google also show wp-content. KIndly check below in google. site:http://baltimoreelite.com/ How I can fix this issue?
Technical SEO | | marknorman0 -
Pointing Other URL to My Site? Good or bad for ranking.
A few years ago I purchased a few keyword rich domain names and set up some satellite sites. Spammy I now know. What should I do now? I own the domain names for at least another 3 years. Should I point them to my main site or would that hurt my main site ranking?
Technical SEO | | caisson0 -
Using Google Adwords is good?
I heard about that if you using adwords, google drops your ranking a little bit. Because of you already pay money for results. I think that is reasonable.
Technical SEO | | umutege0 -
When to use canonical urls
I will be the first to admit I am never really 100% sure when to use canonical urls. I have a quick question and I am not really sure if this is a situation for a canonical or not. I am looking at a my friends building website and there are issues with what pages are ranking. Basically there homepage is focusing on the building refurbishment location but for some reason in internal page is ranking for that keyword and it is not mentioned at all on that page. Would this be a time to add the homepage url and a canonical on the ranking page (using yoast plugin) to tell Google that the homepage is the preferred page? Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | propertyhunter0 -
Would you shorten this url, and if so how?
I designed the structure of my website way before I even thought about SEO. I run a website that requires me to categorize articles is somewhat deep nested categories so an example url would be as follows http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna Would you shorten the url to somethign like this? http://www.yakangler.com/a/n/np/b/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna If so how would you manage the redirects I'm unsure how to add a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file that wouldn't require me to add one for every single article. Could I do it with a rule that recognizes only the middle part of the url and redirect it accordingly? Thanks for any advice you might have!
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
When criteria do you use for external linking?
When linking out to external sources what criteria do you use? Also, do you ever add the URL in plain text instead to conserve link juice?
Technical SEO | | Charlessipe0