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
-
SEO & IFrame problem
Hi All, I will try and keep this as simple as possible. My product page links to a separate page with an IFrame, giving my users the option to upload artwork for the product. The IFrame contains the external file upload site (mail big file). When finished, the user can use a button link to return to the product page to continue with their order. As soon as the page with the IFrame was crawled by Google, the IFrame page started to rank in place of where my product page used to rank, yet there is no content on the page relating to my product (just a file upload). So now users are visiting the IFrame via the same query which must be an absolute headache and not useful at all. I have tried the following: 1. Added a line in body text which contains an internal link pointing to the product page using exact match anchor text for the query. (This didn't work) 2. I applied a no index tag to the IFrame, and now my product page is no longer ranking at all. Can anyone help me solve this puzzle. I believe I might be missing something. Kind regards, Adam
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
URL Structure & SEO - Should we be using sub-folders?
Hi all, As part of our content marketing efforts we have run a number of initiatives in the past and created pages on the website to go along with them (also where the links for these particular projects point to). However, the URL structure isn't actually a reflection of where the pages sit on the site. Unfortunately I'm unable to provide a URL for reasons I won't bore you with, but here's an example: We recently ran a competition that was very successful in generating links. The URL for this is www.domain.co.uk/competition. However, the page actually sits within the About Us section - which is where all of our news and content marketing pages go - and uses a URL override. How much of an issue is this in regards to A) Our SEO in general?; and B) Ensuring we receive as much equity from the links we earn as possible? A brief explanation of what URL overrides actually are would also be useful! (We have a digital marketing agency who handle most of our SEO) Thanks in advance guys! John
Technical SEO | | NAHL-14300 -
Will the Google juice flow after a redirect?
If someone links to this page : http://abonnes.hospimedia.fr/articles/20131004-plfss-2014-les-federations-de-l-aide-a Will the Google juice flow to this page? http://www.hospimedia.fr/actualite/articles/20131010-gestion-des-risques-un-projet-de-decret-vient
Technical SEO | | Syl200 -
Will a timed 301 redirect work for Googlebot?
Our client is changing brand names and domain names. We know we need to 301 redirect the old domain, but for marketing reasons we want people to see a short message saying that the brand has changed and that they will be redirected. Example: | | Our concern is how, or if, Googlebot will intepret the redirect. Will this accomplish our SEO objective of moving the value of the page to the new domain, or do we need to do just a plain old fashioned 301 redirect and not even let the page load? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
We have over 3000 duplicate page titles, please help!
Hi, we did a crawl report and have over 3000 duplicate page titles. I'm not sure why this is happening... could it be because we have put posts in multiple categories? Can anyone help us with a quick fix? our site is www.stayathomemum.com.au thank you kindly, Chris
Technical SEO | | stayathomemum0 -
New to rich snippets, help needed
Hi, I have an online store selling mens business attire in Australia. I have had my developers add the required code to allow rich snippets. You can see the result here http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fjsshirts.com.au%2Fmens-business-shirts%2Fclassic-fit%2Fsky-blue-poplin-classic-fit-shirt.html&view=cse I have few questions 1.How can I change the product description? Is it possible to use the product Meta Tag as the description? 2.Under the stars and the review count is this text. The excerpt from the page will show up here. The reason we can't show text from your webpage is because the text depends on the query the user types. Should whateever product description I have used show up here? 3.Is there anything else I need to do to get SERP's to show the snippet? Many thanks for any answers, Jason
Technical SEO | | mullsey0 -
I need some HTACCESS help (Magento)
Hi Guys, I need some help on this htaccess issue in Magneto. So here is what I am trying to do: I wanted to change mysite.com/index.php/etc to mysite.com/etc so I turned on the web friend URLS. That did that, BUT there are still two versions of every page on the site. www.mysite.com/etc and mysite.com/index.php/etc So that isn't good for SEO. So then I applied a 301 matching redirect, RedirectMatch 301 /index.php/(.*) http://www.mysite.com/$1 That solved that problem. But now I am not able to log into the admin. It is mysite.com/index.php/pg45admin. It should redirect to mysite.com/pg45admin but the page just hangs.... It goes into a continuous loop. I tired using the custom URL and then the site crashed and I had to redo it. So what do I need to do for this to work?
Technical SEO | | netviper0 -
How will a domain change affect my rankings?
My company will undergo a domain change in the next few months. Other than implementing 301 redirects, what else can I do to help the search engines realize the site has moved? What kind of impact on rankings can I expect to see? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | raylau0