How does Google treat special characters in titles?
-
Seems like a stupid question, but one that I never really gave much thought about before. How exactly does Google treat special characters in titles? Do they all get seen as spaces?
e.g. Does
Awesome Product - OptionA/OptionB/OptionC available
get seen the same way as
**Awesome Product - OptionA, OptionB, **OptionC available
? Or even
**Awesome Product - OptionA OptionB **OptionC available
? Or will Google see the first title as **OptionA/OptionB/OptionC **being a whole "keyword" due to there being no space between them? Like I've always just assumed that with apostrophised words will be seen as keyword s. And when using commas, there's always a space after the comma anyway. Are all "special characters" treated the same?
-
Thanks for your input, Dan. I won't be using slashes but I was curious as to how they would work with Google.
The category page I had in mind at the time, I had just merged the multiple subcategory pages into the one main category due to cannibalisation evident in rankings (and I was experimenting with how to optimise browser title for previous subcategory-related keywords). The single page is already outperforming the separate pages, but thanks for your suggestion
-
Hi Ria
99.9% certain Google 'sees' all of those as the same in terms of character/word separation. I don't think OptionA/OptionB etc will be seen all as one keyword.
However Patrick has the right idea - to question if you really need one page or if things can be broken into separate pages.
I'd also optimize for readability and clicks too
-Dan
-
I usually use commas as option separators, etc. But when pixel width is limited, sometimes the extra 3 or 4 characters comes in handy for things like Blue/Red/Black/White instead of Blue, Red, Black, White.
The specific example I had in mind in the OP (Awesome Product - OptionA/OptionB/OptionC available), I was actually thinking of a category page I'm working on and not a product (I realise now my choice of example title was confusing).
Originally, category structure was this:
Awesome Product
-
OptionA
-
Lots of products
-
OptionB
-
Lots of products
-
OptionC
-
Lots of products
-
etc
But subcategories have been noticeably slipping over the past year, and I've attributed this down to the landing pages cannibalising each other. So I'm in the process of flattening the whole category and using filters to separate the different product options, and working on strengthening the main category page to accommodate all user search patterns. While drafting a new title for the category page to incorporate the deleted subcategories, I was just curious how Google treats the forward slashes as I'm usually a comma person too. And whether it makes a difference at all to Google.
**TL;DR: **I'll probably stick with the commas because it does look more readable for users, just wondering how Google reads characters like that and whether it extracts the separate keywords OptionA/OptionB/OptionC.
-
-
Hi there
I like the commas - the way you have the /'s in your title make it look like one word. You could do...
Awesome Product - OptionA / OptionB / OptionC available
...but is that really the best title? I'd challenge you to come up with some different titles. If the variants are different enough to warrant their own pages with their own URLs, own descriptions, and markup, then you could create unique page titles that are dedicated to one product.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Which keyword for title
I'm trying to figure out what to use for my title text. It's for a structural steel fabrication company. Adwords has the average monthly searches for "structural steel" and "steel fabrication" identical at 5,400. It has "structural steel fabrication" at 390 which I get that since its longer and a little more specific will have less searches. My question is if I make the title "structural steel fabrication" does google just see it as 1 big keyword or will it rank for "structural steel" and/or "steel fabrication"? What would any of you go with here? All 3 keyword strings make sense for the person seeing the title. Thanks for any advice you can give, Clay
Keyword Research | | clayknight0 -
How to get search volume in Google's keyword planner
I want to know the search volume for ~1000 keywords that I discovered via ubersuggest. Yesterday I could have done this in 5 minutes, but I can't seem to get it to work in the new Google tool and would love some advice. When I either upload or copy and paste my list into the tool I can get it to give me search ideas with volume, but it has all the keywords I am uploading as 0 search volume (when I know that is not true and some of them have thousands of searches). I've tried "entering keywords to see how they perform" and also "searching for keyword ideas" (the second just because the first didn't try after my 10 tries) Any ideas about what I am doing wrong?
Keyword Research | | theLotter
Or is this a bug other people have been experiencing?0 -
Google search not grouping keywords properly
When is a 'Repair' not a 'Repair'...? When it's a "Service" (... cue rapturous applause and laughter!) We run an air conditioning website and we have recently noticed that Google is assuming the keyword "Repair" also means "Service". For example if you type in (in the UK) "Air Conditioner Repair" the first page of Google it puts the word "Service" in bold. E.g: 1. Check this before calling for air conditioner service - YouTube 2. Halfords Autocentres| Air Conditioning Service for all car makes and 3. Service Your Air Conditioner for Summer Comfort « Sustainable Now... why do I find this annoying. I had a amicable dispute with a colleague last year before all of this happened. I noticed that our Google Adwords campaign was showing a high bounce rate for our /air_conditioning_service page. He explained to me that if someone wanted and 'air conditioning service' it was because they wanted their air conditioning fixed / cleaned etc. My argument was that a fair few of the people bouncing off were actually looking for a company to provide a service (of air conditioning) that they were looking for. We split the page in half (half linking through to a repair page and the other half to a page about the service that we offer) and ran a test against the original. I was only expecting a small percentage of people to click on the new option we had added to the page, however, the difference was far greater than ever expected. It was a 60/40% split in favour of the new option not people wanting their aircon repaired/serviced! So in conclusion... very annoyingly, Google is recognising my service page rather than my far more relevant repair page, and there seems to be nothing I can do about it (other than make my service page more relevant) Rant over... but has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is there anything you can do about it?
Keyword Research | | trickshotric0 -
Ignore keywords that have no data in the Google Keyword Tool?
Hello, There are some keywords that have no monthly search data in the Google Keyword Tool. In many cases, this is because there have been very few searches for the keyword. Would you recommend focusing on other keywords that do have search data in the Google Keyword Tool? Perhaps focusing too far out on the long tail of search results can be less productive than focusing on keywords that have proven that at least some people care about them. What do you think? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | nyc-seo0 -
Big difference in rank on google.com and google.no
Hi Our E-com website went from 8th to 1st spot yesterday for our most important keyword (barneklær = childrens clothing) on google.no weirdly enough we arent ranking on first page at all on google.com . I find this very strange especially since the keyword itself is so country specific - mainly because of the norwegian specific letter - æ. The results are not due to personalization i ve check it with the keyword difficulty tool here on seomoz. The sites ranking higher then me on google.com are sites i am ranking higher then on google.no. Anyone got a good explanation ? The changes for my keyword in ranking i saw yesterday was alot more then i am used to see - almost like google made some sort of script change. we went from 8th to 1st. 1st dropped to 4th, 5ht went to 2nd etc - i am not used to seeing this big changes. Anyone got a clue to either of these 2 questions ?
Keyword Research | | danlae0 -
Google Keyword Tool Regional?
If you use the Google keyword tool while logged in to your Google profile, will the keyword tool attempt to show you regional or local suggestions?
Keyword Research | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Keywords in google's webmaster tools
how heavily do the list of keywords in google's webmaster tools reflect your ranking for those keywords? For example see this screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39497/Screen shot 2011-06-04 at 7.22.31 PM.png we are a self storage company, and our first two keywords in google's webmaster tools are storage and self. the problem is nobody searches for self storage (from my keyword research). most people search for "storage +cityname" like "storage toronto" for example. so i guess my question would be this: would it be effective to change all the instances of "Self" on our website to "Toronto" or other city names to try to push the city names higher in google's webmaster tools keywords rank?
Keyword Research | | adriandg0 -
Google Keyword Tool
I have been analysing some specific seasonal keywords in terms of search volume within the Google keyword tool. When I download the google keyword volume for each term, this is displayed as a monthly average. I am wanting to get search volume over previous months which I am sure the Google keyword tool used to offer Does anyone have a solution to this? Thanks Simon
Keyword Research | | simonsw0