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Does having a "+" in a URL hurt SEO? Would much value be gained changing it to a hyphen?
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There's a site that contains "+" signs in the URL in order to call different information for the content on the page. Would it be better to change those to hyphens (-), or not that much value will be gained, so leave them as is?
Thanks!
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Here is what I posted last time this came up:
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.
Also here is link someone posted last time about an article Rands wrote in 2006:
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You should use hyphens rather than plus signs if possible.
Plus signs are a "reserved" character normally used in dynamic URLs and could cause confusion for the web crawlers which could lead to pages not getting indexed.
However, if you have been using plus signs and don't have any issues with those pages not being indexed, you can probably safely leave them in place. There are sites that use plus signs without any problem. If those pages already have lots of inbound links, you would need to do 301 redirects or use a rewrite to change the plusses to hyphens. Apparently plus signs can be recognized as separators like a hyphen, so there is probably no significant difference in regard to SEO.
So if it isn't going to be a huge hassle with redirects etc, I would recommend changing to hyphens.
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