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Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
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Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated.
Thank you!
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They will not negatively effect your SEO. In general the pipe character " | " is used to separate title segments. Further situations make sense as well like "&" is used to shorten "and" since "and" is generally of no value. Thus, "&" saves you 2 characters.
For example the title of this page is:
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions | Moz Q&A
Hope this helps,
Don
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Interesting information. Thank you.
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For your reference:
- http://moz.com/community/q/is-it-ok-to-use-encoded-special-characters-in-meta-titles
- http://moz.com/community/q/are-ampersands-in-title-tags-helpful-or-harmful
- http://moz.com/community/q/using-commas-in-the-tittle-tag
The general thought is that they will take up valuable ranking landscape, since your title lengths are limited to begin with.
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