undefined
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
    • MozCon
    • 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.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • 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. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?

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.

Why are apostrophes and other characters still showing as code in my titles?

Technical SEO
3
17
13.8k
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.
  • Function5
    Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 4:30 PM

    Hi,

    I have a WordPress-based site and overall everything is working well. However, I can't seem to figure out how to get apostrophes and other characters to display normally.

    Now, the problem isn't that they are displaying as code to normal visitors or up in the title bar, they are displaying as code to Google's bots as well as to SEOMOZ.

    Example:

    Normal visitor sees:

    About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts

    Google and SEOMOZ see:

    About **** | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts

    I've played around with different ways of typing the title (not using character codes vs. using character codes) and nothing seems to work.

    Any help or explanation would be appreciated.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • blu42media
      blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 11:16 AM Jun 16, 2011, 11:16 AM

      Gabriel-

      It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page.  There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else.  The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone.  For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you.  To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you.  The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.

      So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title.  I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?

      If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me.  This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Function5
        Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 7:31 AM Jun 16, 2011, 7:31 AM

        One more thing - I've noticed that Google, SEOMOZ, and Firefox's View Source all show apostrophes, ampersands, and other characters as code not just in the title tag but also throughout the body of the page - so it is a general problem.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Function5
          Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 7:24 AM Jun 16, 2011, 7:23 AM

          I actually removed site caching because it was causing some problems. But yes, I had it on previously.

          I'm wondering if the wordpress function - wp_texturize - is doing something funny to the titles...

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • blu42media
            blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 7:05 AM Jun 16, 2011, 7:05 AM

            Gabriel-

            Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Function5
              Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 7:00 AM Jun 16, 2011, 7:00 AM

              Fixed some of the other issues with my site (had a bunch of white spaces in my php files) but this is still not working. I inserted your code and it doesn't break anything, but it doesn't work either from what I can tell...

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • blu42media
                blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 16, 2011, 12:37 AM Jun 16, 2011, 12:37 AM

                Gabriel, I think we're close here... give this a try:

                <title></p> <p><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?></p> <p><?php echo mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo('name', 'display'), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES'); ?></p> <p></title>

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • Function5
                  Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 7:54 PM Jun 15, 2011, 7:54 PM

                  Okay, I found the line:

                  <title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

                  And I tried inserting your code multiple ways but now Fetch as Googlebot is saying the site is unreachable. I've reversed but still get same problem...

                  Strange stuff.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • blu42media
                    blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 7:36 PM Jun 15, 2011, 7:36 PM

                    Look in your header.php file.  Here's what the <title>tag code might look like.  Again, you may need to wrap the mb function around more than one piece.  This should get you started.</p> <blockquote style="color: #5e5e5e; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><title><?php</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">/*</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span> */</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"> </span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">global $page, $paged;</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog name.</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span>bloginfo( 'name' );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add the blog description for the home/front page.</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">$site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo " | $site_description";</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">// Add a page number if necessary:</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )</span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'oldheidelbergdeli' ), max( $paged, $page ) );</span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span> </span></span></p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">?></title>

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Function5
                      Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 7:27 PM Jun 15, 2011, 7:27 PM

                      Thanks for looking into this. Approximately where would I place this code?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • blu42media
                        blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 7:23 PM Jun 15, 2011, 7:23 PM

                        This worked for me....

                        $site_description = mb_convert_encoding(get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' ), 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');

                        The text is getting encoding in the second half of your meta tag, so if you convert the encoding you should be able to get around this.  You may need to apply this to several sections of that depending on what's going on... check the tag out on several pages.

                        Let me know how it works out.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • Function5
                          Function5 @networkelites last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 7:08 PM Jun 15, 2011, 7:08 PM

                          Well what would be the html entity code for a standard apostrophe. And even if that is solved, the & is still not displaying correctly.

                          I've searched many forums for the answer but nothing seems to be coming up!

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote -1
                          • networkelites
                            networkelites last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 6:54 PM Jun 15, 2011, 6:54 PM

                            Hi Gabriel,

                            ' Looks like an html entity code for some non-standard apostrophe.  Not sure why though, it looks normal. Your apostrophe might need to be changed to a single quote instead.

                            Function5 1 Reply Last reply Jun 15, 2011, 7:08 PM Reply Quote 0
                            • Function5
                              Function5 @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 6:24 PM Jun 15, 2011, 6:16 PM

                              I've done what you've said and this is what I've come up with:

                              <title><?php wp_title('«', true, 'right'); ?> <?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

                              Does anything look odd?

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • blu42media
                                blu42media @Function5 last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 6:10 PM Jun 15, 2011, 6:10 PM

                                Ahh, you are right about the first ampersand.  You should probably take a look at the wp_title() function and see if it's doing any html_special_chars filtering.  Again, if nothing else seems to work, you could change up the "and" remove the possessive on Vancouver.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • Function5
                                  Function5 @blu42media last edited by Feb 23, 2012, 6:43 AM Jun 15, 2011, 5:57 PM

                                  Thanks for the quick reply. I tried doing that but not luck. The odd thing is that using Google's Webmaster tools, I see that the meta title and some of the headings have the code in them whereas other body text doesn't. Either way, I need to resolve this.

                                  I tested a page and here are a couple of lines:

                                   <code><title>IT & Web Services | **** - Metro Vancouver's IT & Web Experts</title>
                                  
                                  Odd how the first & (and) looks fine whereas the second doesn't.</code>
                                  
                                  blu42media Function5 12 Replies Last reply Jun 16, 2011, 11:16 AM Reply Quote 0
                                  • blu42media
                                    blu42media last edited by Jun 15, 2011, 5:41 PM Jun 15, 2011, 5:41 PM

                                    Hey Gabriel-

                                    Quick and dirty... you could change the meta title to Function 5 - Metro Vancouver IT and Web Experts.

                                    Have you tried putting the full & in the meta title?  There might be a double-conversion issue going on there.

                                    -John

                                    Function5 1 Reply Last reply Jun 15, 2011, 5:57 PM Reply Quote 0
                                    • 1 / 1
                                    1 out of 17
                                    • First post
                                      1/17
                                      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

                                    • Cassie_Ransom

                                      Do long UTM codes hurt SEO?

                                      Since most UTM codes/URLs are longer than 70ish characters, is this hurting my SEO? If it is, how can I solve the problem while still using a UTM code? Thanks!

                                      Technical SEO | Nov 16, 2018, 7:30 PM | Cassie_Ransom
                                      0
                                    • GhillC

                                      Duplicated titles and meta descriptions

                                      Hi, Dealing with both my duplicated titles and meta descriptions i'm wondering if there's a "quick" win I could potentially implement asap. A bit of background:
                                      Say I've 4 pages structured that way: domain.com/us/productA.html for the US domain.com/gb/productA.html the UK domain.com/fr/productA.html for France domain.com/de/productA.html For Germany At the moment, both my page titles and meta-descriptions are duplicated all over the place for product A.
                                      Title is reading "Product A - company name"
                                      MD is a bit better, being translated in all 3 languages (En, Fr, DE). Therefore being the same for the US and for the UK. Ideally, I would get unique page titles and MD all over the place. However, due to time and resource constraints, I can't make it happen overnight. So my questions are pretty simple:
                                      1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
                                      2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted. Ideally speaking, both my page titles and MD would be completely unique but I can't afford doing so in the short term. Thanks!

                                      Technical SEO | Apr 5, 2024, 8:52 AM | GhillC
                                      0
                                    • ZAG

                                      Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

                                      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!

                                      Technical SEO | Jul 12, 2013, 1:05 PM | ZAG
                                      1
                                    • JarnoNijzing

                                      Use of title tags on divs for SEO purposes

                                      Hello community, I recently was asked by a client to analyze a website of a competitor. I did was he asked me to do but when I  looked at the source code of the website I found this code: I changed the exact words into something for privacy reasons, but I never looked at a code like this.
                                      Using a div for an anchor I get but adding a title tag to the div? I never seen that before. Title tags on anchors, yes, using images in divs as background and then adding a title??? Does anyone have any experience with a code like this and if you do how does this impact rankings? Does it impact rankings at all and does anybody know of any correlation between the two? Looking forward for your responses. Regards Jarno

                                      Technical SEO | Jun 28, 2013, 11:14 AM | JarnoNijzing
                                      0
                                    • solution.advisor

                                      Keyword not showing

                                      Hi, we are trying to rank this keyword "Human Resource Books" for Silvercreek.ca for a long time. But somehow, the keyword is not ranked by google at all. Is there  a reason why Google is denying our site? What did we do wrong? Can anyone help to see what wrong with tis siet www.silvercreekpress.ca? thanks

                                      Technical SEO | Dec 3, 2012, 8:57 PM | solution.advisor
                                      0
                                    • ttb

                                      Tags showing up in Google

                                      Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.

                                      Technical SEO | Jul 25, 2012, 5:58 PM | ttb
                                      0
                                    • slangdon

                                      Google is Showing Website as "Untitled"

                                      My freelance designer made some changes to my website and all of a sudden my homepage was showing the title I have in Dmoz. We thought maybe the NOODP tag was not correct, so we edited that a little and now the site is showing as "Untitled". The website is http://www.chemistrystore.com/. Of course he didn't save an old copy that we can revert to. That is a practice that will end. I have no idea why the title and description that we have set for the homepage is not showing in google when it previously was. Another weird thing that I noticed is that when I do ( site:chemistrystore.com ) in Google I get the https version of the site showing with the correct title and description. When I do ( site:www.chemistrystore.com ) in Google I don't have the hompage showing up from what I can tell, but there are 4,000+ pages to the site. My guess is that if it is showing up, it is showing up as "Untitled". My question is.... How can we get Google to start displaying the proper title and description again?

                                      Technical SEO | Feb 2, 2012, 7:47 PM | slangdon
                                      0
                                    • JasonDGreat

                                      Why crawl error "title missing or empty" when there is already "title and meta desciption" in place?

                                      I've been getting 73 "title missing or empty" warnings from SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic. This is weird as I've installed yoast wordpress seo plugin and all posts do have title and meta description. But why the results here.. can anyone explain what's happening? Thanks!! Here are some of the links that are listed with "title missing, empty". Almost all our blog posts were listed there. http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-here-for-good/ http://www.gan4hire.com/blog/2011/are-you-socially-awkward/ MaeM3.png TLcD8.png

                                      Technical SEO | Nov 5, 2011, 3:14 PM | JasonDGreat
                                      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
                                    • Digital Marketers
                                    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.