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.
Use of + in url good or bad?
-
Hi,
I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ?Thanks!
-
Our site uses the "+" and is has never hurt our rankings - we've held many #1 positions in Google. If I had to start the site all over again I'd use the dash instead but if you have pages that have been around for a while I wouldn't worry about it.
-
Thanks! All great answers, really helpful!
-
I agree with everyone here, go with "-". Take a day and rewrite all of your urls that are not using "-". Any other symbol usage can be problematic.
-
Yup better to use "-".
The + sign along with the & and % operands can be problematic for spiders and in some cases browsers too.
-
I would get those re-written to dashes for a few different reasons:
- Dashes are known as the best way to separate terms in URLS
- IMO dashes are easier to read by the user, and easier to remember thus more user friendly (just my opinion though no data behind this)
- Plus signs are often used in URL encoding or in query strings, both of which are not great for users, and both of which have been thought of in the past to look somewhat "off putting" to search engines compared to dashes.
So while it might be a pain I would say go to dashes.
-
Use "-" instead of "+"
Here is an article I always have bookmarked for URL Structure, even though it is from 2006, it is a good source of info from Rand.
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
-
Word mentioned twice in URL? Bad for SEO?
Is a URL like the one below going to hurt SEO for this page? /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html I like the match the URL and H1s as close as possible but in this case it looks a bit funky. /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html
Technical SEO | Apr 19, 2016, 12:38 PM | jsilapas0 -
Website credits for designers - good or bad
Hi My core service is web design and development. I often place a credit on my clients websites pointing them back to my web design or web development pages. Is this a wise practice with penguin and panda updates? Would this also pull my ranking down?
Technical SEO | Jan 31, 2013, 11:11 PM | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Approved Word Separators in URLs
Hi There, We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused. Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another? Some links I've found discussing the topic: This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/ This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/ I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc... Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | Nov 10, 2012, 5:09 PM | Richline_Digital1 -
MBG Tracker...how to use it?
So I am a new blogger that has been submitting guest blog posts to a number of different blogs. It was recommended that I use the MBG Tracker so I can track the back links. The problem is that I am totally lost on how to use this tool. As I said before I am new to this whole thing and I am not really sure what constitutes a "base link" and a "back link." In the author bylines we are linking to different pages within a larger website. If anyone can help me I would really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | Apr 11, 2012, 3:11 PM | Stroll0 -
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
I can buy a domain from a competitor. Whats the best way to make good use of these links for my existing website
Technical SEO | Feb 1, 2012, 7:22 PM | Archers0 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | Dec 3, 2011, 7:08 PM | jkundrotas0 -
Products with discrete URLs for each color
here is the issue. i have an ecommerce site that on a category page, shows each individual color for each product sold. and there is a distinct URL for each color. each product page shares the same content, with the only potentially differentiating factor being customer reviews (not nearly enough of these to differentiate anything). so we have URLs like: www.domain.com/product-green www.domain.com/product-yellow www.domain.com/product-red and so on. i am looking for a way to consolidate these URL while still showing all colors on the category page. the first solution i am considering is using the hash tag. so we would create www.domain.com/product#green, www.domain.com/product#yellow, www.domain.com/product#red. if possible, i would set the canonical tag as www.domain.com/product. the second solution would be to use the canonical tag and keep the URLs as is. the issue i see here is that we would need to create www.domain.com/product and show that page somewhere. www.domain.com/product would the URL that the above color URLs would canonicalize to. what would be the preferred solution? or is there something else?
Technical SEO | Sep 14, 2011, 6:58 PM | rakesh_patel0 -
Is using a Href in Div OK?
Hi, I was just wondering what your thoughts are on using a Href in a Div, which contains anchor text. We currently use the Href on the div, as opposed to just the anchor text as I want the whole div to be clickable as opposed to just the anchor text. So currently I have: Keword 1
Technical SEO | Jul 18, 2011, 8:53 AM | James77
Keyword 2 Is this perfectly fine to do it like this as opposed to using <a tags="" ???<br="">I suppose there are various alternatives - if you must use the</a><a tag="" like:<="" p=""></a> <a tag="" like:<="" p=""></a> Keword 1
Keyword 2 However I would assume a search engine is smart enought to know its the same thing??? Thanks0