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.
Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)
-
G'd everyone,
I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO. Eg. é , ë ô in words
Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine?
-
how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index & Crawl
-
Best Practices when it comes to URLs -
-
uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where?
-
any disadvantage using special characters
-
Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience.
Thanks heaps,
Amy
-
-
Google handles special characters in URLs, titles, etc. just fine now - a page like http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Château_de_Versailles uses the proper accent on the a, and is displayed properly in modern browsers as well as in Google's results.
There should be no impact on rankings, although it's safe to say that best practice would include using the proper characters, as they certainly benefit usability.
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
-
Unsolved Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL
hello
Moz Pro | | ssblawton2533
i have enter my site faroush.com but i got an error
Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL - please check to make sure it is correct
what is problem ?0 -
URL Length Issue
MOZ is telling me the URLs are too long. I did a little research and I found out that the length of the URLs is not really a serious problem. In fact, others recommend ignoring the situation. Even on their blog I found this explanation: "Shorter URLs are generally preferable. You do not need to take this to the extreme, and if your URL is already less than 50-60 characters, do not worry about it at all. But if you have URLs pushing 100+ characters, there's probably an opportunity to rewrite them and gain value. This is not a direct problem with Google or Bing - the search engines can process long URLs without much trouble. The issue, instead, lies with usability and user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to parse, copy and paste, share on social media, and embed, and while these may all add up to a fractional improvement in sharing or amplification, every tweet, like, share, pin, email, and link matters (either directly or, often, indirectly)." And yet, I have these questions: In this case, why do I get this error telling me that the urls are too long, and what are the best practices to get this out? Thank You
Moz Pro | | Cart_generation1 -
Links to Your Site: No Data Available in Google Search Console
The site I am working on did not have their site submitted to Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools). I submitted the site and a sitemap that auto updates. Google is crawling the site daily (about 30 pages a day). Under Search Traffic > Links to Your Site it shows no data is availible. I thought it was because it was a newly submitted site, but it has been two months now. Moz seems to have the same issue. Moz does show inbound links, but their are some that we think should really help us that are not shown. For instance, the Dallas Morning News wrote this article. They have a high DA and PA. Also, iliveindallas.com has an article about us that is still on the front page. That was a few weeks ago but also does not show up on Moz or Google SC. We are trying to be selective about the links we are getting. That they are follow links from reputable sites. Worried that both Google and Moz are not showing them.
Moz Pro | | TapGoods1 -
Youtube traffic page url referral
Hello, How can I see which videos from Youtube that has my domain inserted in their description url drive traffic to my domain? I can see in GA how many visitors are coming from Youtube to my domain, but I can't see what Youtube video pages has driven traffic. Any help?
Moz Pro | | xeonet320 -
Woocommerce filter urls showing in crawl results, but not indexed?
I'm getting 100's of Duplicate Content warnings for a Woocommerce store I have. The urls are
Moz Pro | | JustinMurray
etc These don't seem to be indexed in google, and the canonical is for the shop base url. These seem to be simply urls generated by Woocommerce filters. Is this simply a false alarm from Moz crawl?0 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Need help understanding search filter URL's and meta tags
Good afternoon Mozzers, One of our clients is a real estate agent and on that site there is a search field that will allow a person to search by filtered categories. Currently, the URL structure makes a new URL for each filter option and in my Moz reports I get the report that there is missing meta data. However, the page is the same the filter options are different so I am at a loss as to how to proper tag our site to optimize those URL's. Can I rel canonical the URL's or alt rel them? I have been looking for a solution for a few days now and like I said I am at a loss of how to properly resolve these warning messages, or if I should even be concerned with the warning messages from Moz (obviously I should be concerned, they are warning messages for a reason). Thank you for your assistance in advance!
Moz Pro | | Highline_Ideas0 -
How to fix problem with google analytics connection?
In the Organic Traffic Data Report I receive always the same message: "It appears there's a problem with our connection to your Google Analytics account. Please go to your Settings page to update your connection." In the settings I've choosen the correct Google Analytics Account with the correct profile. Thanks for any hints. Is it because using www. in the GA Profil but *.xyz.ch without www in the campaigns settings?
Moz Pro | | FlorianMuff760