Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs

    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

    Web Design
    4
    6
    20668
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DROIDSTERS
      DROIDSTERS last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ChrisDyson
        ChrisDyson @Morningside last edited by

        Yes James you're referencing HTML that's incorrect

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Morningside
          Morningside @ChrisDyson last edited by

          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).

          ChrisDyson 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • webg
            webg last edited by

            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:

            http://someserver.com/?param1=someinfo¶m2=another¶m3=some text using special characters such %26 %25 and more

            ..And will be corrected.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -2
            • ChrisDyson
              ChrisDyson last edited by

              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

              Morningside 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Morningside
                Morningside last edited by

                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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • KendallHershey

                  How do elements that are displayed when scrolled impact SEO?

                  Hi, We are wanting to implement Animate.css and Wowjs on our site and were concerned about the SEO impacts. Basically when the page is loaded, if the element is not within the viewport then the HTML tag (i.e. div tag) have a style="visibility: hidden" and once the element is within the viewport it will change to have style="visibility: visible". Would having the style="visibility: hidden" negatively impact SEO?

                  Web Design | | KendallHershey
                  0
                • vtmoz

                  Does the blog widget with latest blog-posts at homepage helps in SEO?

                  Hi all, We are planning to add a widget at our website homepage which displays recent blog-posts with dates. Google favours new and latest content. So will these consistent new posts help in improving website ranking? Thanks

                  Web Design | | vtmoz
                  0
                • STP_SEO

                  Does too much inline CSS impact SEO rankings

                  Hello, Does implementing a lot of inline CSS have a negative impact on SEO rankings? I imagine it could affect page speed, but any other issues I might run in to?

                  Web Design | | STP_SEO
                  1
                • VirginiaC

                  SEO and Squarespace? Is this Really an Option?

                  Hi all, Any feedback on Squarespace, SEO capabilites and ranking factors? I have a client wishing to use the platform and despite the good reviews, which appear to be from resellers by the way, the forums say not. Although apparently Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz (yes right here!) gave them a big thumbs up “The square space team have put together a remarkable platform, SEO friendliness! Really not sure here and don’t agree, there are many limitations and hosting with a template provider is always big no no. Cheers
                  Virginia

                  Web Design | | VirginiaC
                  0
                • TomNYC

                  Can white text over images hurt your SEO?

                  Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a  redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom

                  Web Design | | TomNYC
                  0
                • Bromtec

                  White Text / Black Background & SEO Impact

                  Does anyone know of any testing / studies with evidence that Google prefers dark text on a light background vs. light text on a dark background? I have a website that currently has light text on a black background, and really like the way it looks, but am concerned that the style may be hurting SEO. Moreover, redesigning something inverse with the same quality would be a large project and fairly costly, so I'd like to make sure the benefit will really be worth the cost before moving forward.

                  Web Design | | Bromtec
                  0
                • MichaelWeisbaum

                  Drop Down Menus & SEO?

                  Do these typically have a negative impact on SEO?  I know this is kind of a vague question, does it make it harder to spider?  Are there SEO friendly ways of coding these?  There are so many sites out there that have these, so I've got to assume it's different on a case by case basis.

                  Web Design | | MichaelWeisbaum
                  0
                • JonathanFashbaugh

                  Does using Wordpress Multisite have any negative SEO impact?

                  I manage multiple websites in Wordpress and the idea of managing them all under one Wordpress install is very attractive. Are there any dangers SEO-wise to doing so? I know that all of the sites would live under the same IP address, but that's not something I'm really concerned with anyway because I don't do a lot of inter-linking between the sites. Thanks for your help! -El Juano

                  Web Design | | JonathanFashbaugh
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.