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.
Should we use "and" or "&"?
-
Our client has an ampersand in their brand name. The logo has "&", their url is spelled out. I'm trying to get them to standardize the use of the name for directories/listings. Should we use "and" or "&"?
-
I'd go for &.
I optimized a page for "Canada & New England Cruises" some years back. The results were:
canada and new england cruises = 24th of 6,300,000 results canada & new england cruises = 32nd of 7,660,000 results
This indicates to me that Google probably knows the difference.
-
Greetings VernonMack, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. Your question is a good one and, happily, the answer here is simple. You need to use whatever your legal business name is. If your DBA uses ampersand, then consistently use this to describe your business on your website, local listings and elsewhere. If it uses and, then use that. Be consistent and you will be fine.
-
and = & (much of a muchness really)
I'd go with "&" i the directories if that's what's in the logo so consumers get familiar / see consistency with the brand - also it's shorter
-
Use at&t or at t (including spacing).
Let's refer to the At&t example
If you use "&" google will still read it as att or at&t however if you include "and" then this becomes a totally different term.
So try with spacing or &
Hope this helps,
Vahe
-
Hi Woj. Thanks for the reply. Looks like my first question was unclear. URL is already established. Please see clarification note to Francisco above.
-
Thanks, Francisco. I need to use one or the other. i.e. "Heating & Air" or "Heating and Air" because HeatingAir would not be right.
To clarify, I am trying to determine the best way to add the client's NAME (not url) to listings/directories. I was just noting that the url is already ...heatingandair.com.
-
The "&" character is typically reserved for the querystring portion of the URL
I'd avoid using "and" or "&" in url's except for in the TLD if it's critical for the brand
Also, another tip.. if you use "and", make sure it doesn't get confused with the surrounding words, e.g.
- camelandhorse.com may be read as "came land horse" or "camel and horse"
(sorry, no real-word example came mind lol - except for the old expertsexchange.com URL)
-
I would probably use AT&T's example (ATT). I believe Matt Cutts said the & is looked at as a character. I tried going straight to at&t.com and it sent me to a SERP. Using the word "and" in the domain sounds weird to me.
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
-
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | Mar 4, 2023, 7:39 AM | RocketStats0 -
Does my "spam" site affect my other sites on the same IP?
I have a link directory called Liberty Resource Directory. It's the main site on my dedicated IP, all my other sites are Addon domains on top of it. While exploring the new MOZ spam ranking I saw that LRD (Liberty Resource Directory) has a spam score of 9/17 and that Google penalizes 71% of sites with a similar score. Fair enough, thin content, bunch of follow links (there's over 2,000 links by now), no problem. That site isn't for Google, it's for me. Question, does that site (and linking to my own sites on it) negatively affect my other sites on the same IP? If so, by how much? Does a simple noindex fix that potential issues? Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
Technical SEO | Mar 31, 2015, 11:06 AM | eglove0 -
"nofollow pages" or "duplicate content"?
We have a huge site with lots of geographical-pages in this structure: domain.com/country/resort/hotel domain.com/country/resort/hotel/facts domain.com/country/resort/hotel/images domain.com/country/resort/hotel/excursions domain.com/country/resort/hotel/maps domain.com/country/resort/hotel/car-rental Problem is that the text on ie. /excursions is often exactly the same on .../alcudia/hotel-sea-club/excursion and .../alcudia/hotel-beach-club/excursion The two hotels offer the same excursions, and the intro text on the pages are the exact same throughout the entire site. This is also a problem on the /images and /car-rental pages. I think in most cases the only difference on these pages is the Title, description and H1. These pages do not attract a lot of visits through search-engines. But to avoid them being flagged as duplicate content (we have more than 4000 of these pages - /excursions, /maps, /car-rental, /images), do i add a nofollow-tag to these, do i block them in robots.txt or should i just leave them and live with them being flagged as duplicate content? Im waiting for our web-team to add a function to insert a geographical-name in the text, so i could add ie #HOTELNAME# in the text and thereby avoiding the duplicate text. Right now we have intros like: When you visit the hotel ... instead of: When you visit Alcudia Sea Club But untill the web-team has fixed these GEO-tags, what should i do? What would you do and why?
Technical SEO | Aug 6, 2012, 9:32 AM | alsvik0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | May 5, 2012, 11:42 PM | EugeneF0 -
Does using parentheses affect the crawlers?
Quick question: if you using a parantheses around a keyword, do search bots still recognize the keyword? Fox ex: Welcome to a website about the National Basketball Association (NBA). Will the bots recognize that I'm trying to optimize to NBA and not (NBA)? Is this different for tags vs. actual body copy?
Technical SEO | Dec 30, 2016, 1:40 AM | BPIAnalytics2 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | Aug 23, 2011, 12:55 PM | MaartenvandenBos
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!0 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | May 17, 2011, 2:19 PM | ShaMenz0 -
Which pages to "noindex"
I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
Technical SEO | Mar 30, 2011, 2:01 PM | mmaes
search results page
blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.0