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.
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
-
Hi Mozzers
I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs.
Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using).
I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution?
Thanks,
Chris Captivate
-
Yes James you're referencing HTML that's incorrect
-
So basically what you're saying is that Web Design Group, which is a trusted resource on internet coding since 1999 is wrong. Here's more detail about entities:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/
The ampersand is the first character in an entity. Entities are well respected and widely used, at least as long as I've been coding web pages (since about 1997).
-
The & character is also used in Google Analytics parameters. I believe that if there were any problems they wouldn't use. I use this character only to inform the start and finish parameters.
A good example is the UTM parameters used by Google: http://www.domainname.com.br/?utm_source=yourdomain&utm_medium=algo&utm_campaign=yourcampaign&utm_content=something
If you need to include special characters as the information is interesting escape the text before sending to the server.
http://someserver.com/?param1=someinfo¶m2=another¶m3=some text using special characters such & % and more
The url can be correctly corrected using the javascript
escape()
function to convert special characters like:var param3 = 'some text using special characters such & % and more';
escape(param3);// will result some%20text%20using%20special%20characters%20such%20%26%20%25%20and%20more
So your URL will be:
..And will be corrected.
-
Never...
As James correctly pointed out the & (or ampersand) is not a good idea. However his explanation is a little incorrect.
You see URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. URLs often contain characters outside the ASCII set, therefore the URL has to be converted into a valid ASCII format.
When using unsafe ASCII characters you have to replace them with a "%" followed by two hexadecimal digits.
Therefore an "&" is %26 and not & which is the standard HTML character set.
Personally I would look at a way to exclude the & and just have /5-star-hotel-near-beach/ for example
-
Ampersand is used as a delimiter for an entity in standard HTML, so inserting it could lead to a validation error and failure to load the page. If you absolutely must use it in your URL, use the code: & which won't mess anything up. It's just text, so there's no reason for Google to penalize it. Under the concept of topic modeling, Google will recognize & as "and" but usually doesn't pay attention to connectors like that, so it's a non issue.
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
-
Is managed wordpress hosting bad for seo?
hi, i would like to create my own website, but I am confused either to choose cpanel hosting or managed wordpress
Web Design | | alan-shultis0 -
Has anyone ever tested to see if having an ads.txt file provided any SEO lift?
I know that the ads.txt system is designed to prevent ad fraud and technically has nothing to do with search. That said, the presence of such a file would seem to be an indicator of overall site quality because it would show that a site owner wants to participate in a fraud-free system. Has anyone ever tested that? If so, they don't seem to have published their results. Maybe it's a secret weapon that some pros are using and not sharing?
Web Design | | scodtt0 -
Migration from HTML to Wordpress - SEO Implications?
I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory). I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible. My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure. I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse. I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example. I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages. I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2. Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time. (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own). My question here is three parts. 1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content? I might get antsy and want to do it sooner! 🙂 Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | CalicoKitty20001 -
Infinite Scroll and URL Changing
Hi, So my website is having an issue indexing. Much like other sports sites like ESPN or MLB or a variety of others my site changes the URL as you go down the page. So if you go on a news article and continue scrolling you'll go to another news article. I believe that this is creating errors in Search Console with the article being given an error of being "too long". I don't know how to keep this infinite scroll and url changing which increases my pageviews and eliminate the errors. Can someone help?
Web Design | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Have an eBook. What is best practice for SEO?
Hello We have a free eBook - its a great resource and great piece of content. It is available to download on our website here - http://re-timer.com/the-product/how-to-sleep-better/ The book is available as a whole or as individual chapters (i.e. http://re-timer.com/app/uploads/2015/07/Chapter8.pdf?b0df38). The PDF chapters appear to be doing well in Google search for certain keywords. I can't measure this in GA though. I would like the eBook to assist the SEO of my website overall. If I create a web page and 'embedded' the PDF into it will Google still crawl this page? At the moment we are also using this to collect email addresses, this is a nice to have and it is OK if people get the eBook without doing this (if they find a chapter in Google they currently don't have to enter their email address). I'm sure lots of people have eBooks now. What is best practice and the best way to use this as a tool to maximise SEO for the whole website (http://re-timer.com)? Thank you! Laura
Web Design | | LauraFalls1 -
Wordpress Plugin To Capture Form Completion Data, Before Visitor Hits "Submit"?
Greetings MOZ Community: Visitors frequently start to enter contact information in the forms on our website, but then chicken out and don't hit the submit button. I noticed this watching the recordings of visitor web site visits using Mouse Flow. Is there a Wordpress Plugin that would allow us to capture data entered in forms, where the visitor does not finally hit the "submit" button? Obviously this would be very, very valuable as this scenario occurs in one out of three or four instances. Thanks!!!
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
How to know if a wordpress theme is coded correctly for Seo
Hi, So I am curious if there is a tool to see if a site is coed properly for Google? I am running Avada, a standalone theme, yet I am also using a cache plugin. But when I search my code, its all like on one huge line. So I am curious if there is a way to verify or check if a theme is coded correctly? Thank you
Web Design | | Berner1 -
Does Google count the domain name in its 115-character "ideal" URL length?
I've been following various threads having to do with URL length and Google's happiness therewith and have yet to find an answer to the question posed in the title. Some answers and discussions have come close, but none I've found have addressed this with any specificity. Here are four hypothetical URLs of varying lengths and configurations: EXAMPLE ONE:
Web Design | | RScime25
my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (115 characters) EXAMPLE TWO: sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (126 characters) EXAMPLE THREE: www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (130 characters) EXAMPLE FOUR: http://www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (137 characters) Assuming the examples contain appropriate keywords and are linked to appropriate anchor text (etc.,) how would Google look upon each? All I've been able to garner thus far is that URLs should be as short as possible while still containing and contextualizing keywords. I have 500+ URLs to review for the company I work for and could use some guidance; yes, I know I should test, but testing is problematical to the extreme; I look to the collective/accumulated wisdom of the MOZVerse for help. Thanks.1