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  4. Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?

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Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?

Link Building
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  • lucek
    lucek last edited by May 20, 2013, 9:48 AM

    I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same?

    • http://www.example.com/test page.html
    • http://www.example.com/test page.html
    • http://www.example.com/test+page.html
    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • lucek
      lucek @irvingw last edited by May 21, 2013, 2:55 AM May 21, 2013, 2:55 AM

      From what I've seen and tested Google will consider %20 to be the same as space character. Moreover it will convert spaces in URL to %20 in SERP.

      According to RFCs URL should not contain spaces or any other characters that may be incorrectly interpreted (for example <.> but there are others). Such characters should be represented as '%' followed by hex code of the character (20 in case of space).

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • irvingw
        irvingw last edited by May 21, 2013, 2:51 AM May 20, 2013, 3:28 PM

        http://www.example.com/test page.html will be converted to %20 so it could be interpreted as the same page

        All three could be considered spaces, I wouldn't use any of them.

        http://blogs.iis.net/robert_mcmurray/archive/2011/04/27/bad-characters-to-use-in-web-based-filenames.aspx

        lucek 1 Reply Last reply May 21, 2013, 2:55 AM Reply Quote 1
        • KarlBantleman
          KarlBantleman last edited by May 20, 2013, 10:58 AM May 20, 2013, 10:58 AM

          You can't have URL's with spaces in so Google would see them as 2 different URL's. If you have a space Google sees it as %20. I would avoid having this as your URL structure, try using test-page or test_page.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • johncallaghan
            johncallaghan last edited by May 20, 2013, 10:25 AM May 20, 2013, 10:25 AM

            Google would consider the above URL's to be three different pages.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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