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.
Spaces (actual spaces) in URL
-
Hi all,
Is there a huge loss of SEO performance if a URL shows spaces with an actual space (i.e. %20) in the URL rather than a "-" (or indeed a "_")?
I know the preferred option is to have a "-", but I am just wondering if it is worth our effort to manually change the "%20" to a "-" in all the instances?
Thanks
Diana
-
Google reads "-" as a space.
So always use "-" and certainly don't use "%20"
A lot of people use "_" also, instead of using a "-" .. Which they should not be doing.
-
Doug,
Good answer IMO.
Best
-
You are probably better off now worrying too much about any existing URLs with %20's in. Editing these URLs isn't going to make a massive difference (if any).
Plus, there's always a risk when you edit URLs that you break link that are earning your lots of link equity. If you decide to edit your URLs then you've got the headache of setting up re-rdirects or contacting any linking sites and asking for them to change the links. You'll need to check your internal links too.
The big advantage of not having %20s or other strangeness in your URLs is that it does makes them more meaningful are shareable by human beings. You really don't want to have to read these out or print them on the side of a lorry or brochure!
So, I'd suggest it's not worth worrying about, but may depend on your circumstances (such as the age and the number of links). If it's a new site with no links to these pages and there aren't many of them then you may want to do it just to keep things tidy/consistent.
If you've got more than a few, with inbound links to them then you're probably better off using your time elsewhere.
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
-
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
Wordpress BackupBuddy adding ?doing_wp_cron= in URLS
Hi Has anyone found WordPress Backup Buddy causing a problem with SEO. I understand why it does it, but wondered if anyone experienced issues with this? Only sometimes it adds /?doing_wp_cron=****** on to the end of a URL Thanks Tom
Technical SEO | | TomPryor831 -
Mobile URL parameter (Redirection to desktop)
Hello, We have a parallel mobile website and recently we implemented a link pointing to the desktop website. This redirect is happening via a javascript code and results in a url followed by this paramenter: ?m=off Example:
Technical SEO | | echo1
http://www.m.website.com                 redirects to:
http://www.website.com/?m=off Questions: Will the "http://www.website.com/?m=off" be considered duplicate content with "http://www.website.com" since they both return the same content? Is there any possibility that Google will take into consideration the url ending in "/?m=off"? How should we treat this new url? The webmaster tools URL parameter configuration at the moment isn't experiencing problems but should we submit the parameter anyway in order not to be indexed or should we wait first and see the error response? In case we should submit this for removal... what's the best way to do it? Like this? Parameter: ?m=off Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - doesn't affect page content Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you!0 -
Is it a problem to have a homepage with a slug / URL ?
Hi, We are designing a web site for one of our clients, and using a home made CMS. I don't know how this CMS has been built, but anyways, in the end the homepage has a URL format which looks like this : www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html. No www.mydomain.com. Is it dangerous for SEO to have a slug/URL directly on the homepage ? Do you have experiences, cases where it has impacted a site negatively ? The main problem I expect is duplicate content (with Google seeing both www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html as being different pages) but apparently the CMS is doing a 302 redirect from the root domain to the URL (I told my colleague it should at least be a 301). Sorry if this question seems like basic SEO knowledge, but I really can't find a definitive answer on the subject. Thank you very much 🙂
Technical SEO | | edantadis0 -
Cyrillic letter in URL - Encoding
Hi all We are launching our site in Russia. As far as I can see by searching Google all sites have URLs in latin letters. Is there a special reason for this? - It seems that cyrillic letters also work. My technical staff says that it might give some encoding problems. Can anyone give me some insight into this? Thanks in advance.. / Kenneth
Technical SEO | | Kennethskonto0 -
Ok to Put a Decimal in a URL?
I'm in the process of creating new product specific URLs for my company. Some of our products have decimals in them for their names as a unit of measurement. For example - .The URL for a 050" widget would be something like: http://www.example.com/product/category/.050-inch-widget My question is - Can I use a decimal in the URL without ticking off the search engines, and/or causing any other unexpected effects?
Technical SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian
Technical SEO | | ChristianMKTG0