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
-
Category url with resultsperpage loop
Hi there, We upgraded our webshop last weekend and our moz crawl on monday found a lot of errors we are trying to fix. I am having some communication problems with our webmaster so I need a little help. We have extremely long category pages url, does anyone have a guess which kind of mistake our webmaster could make:
Technical SEO | | isabelledylag
https://site-name.pl/category-name?page=3?resultsPerPage=53?resultsPerPage=53 .... And it keeps on repeating the string ?resultsPerPage=53 exactly 451 times as if there was some kind of loop. Thanks in advance for any kind of hint 🙂
Kind regards,
Isabelle0 -
URL ASCII Characters Issue
Hi guys; Is there any different between URL whit capital ASCII code and URL with small ASCII Code? For example I have 2 URLS for one page like this: 1- 332-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B5%DB%8C%D9%84-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A7.html 2- 332-%d8%aa%d8%ad%d8%b5%db%8c%d9%84-%d8%af%d8%b1-%da%a9%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%af%d8%a7.html both of them point to same page but no 1 is non SSL and no 2 is ssl version! and whole pges of site forces to https
Technical SEO | | seoiransite0 -
Should we change our URLs for SEO benefit?
Hi, I'm currently covering a maternity marketing role at i-escape and one our main objectives is to increase organic traffic to the website. i-escape has a selection of hand-picked boutique hotels, villas, lodges, guesthouses and apartments for people to discover and book. At the moment each hotel page URL follows this structure: https://www.i-escape.com/hotelname We'd like to change this to include some searchable words in the URL dependent on the type of hotel. For example: https://www.i-escape.com/boutique-hotels/hotelname or https://www.i-escape.com/boutique-apartments/hotelname If we do go ahead, we know we need to make sure all old style URLs canonically redirect to the new style. Is having the keyword in the URL important enough for us to change over 1500 URLs on the website? We have quite a high quality links pointing to these hotel pages URLs. Also, will this help us with navigation/user journeys/crawls as there will be a /boutique-hotels/hotelname rather than just /hotelname? Thanks so much all! Clair
Technical SEO | | iescape0 -
Flat vs Hierarchical URL Structure
Hi, We are redoing our site structure and I was wondering what are the benefits of having a flat url structure. For example store.com/product instead of doing store.com/category/product. I noticed sites doing it both ways, even moz.com has both structures ex: moz.com/learn/seo and when you clck on something it brings you to moz.com/seo-expert-quiz (even though following the previous logic it should be moz.com/learn/seo/seo-expert-quiz) Please advise, Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WSteven0 -
Are my Domain URLs correctly set up?
Hi Im struggling with this probably easy concept, so I am sure one of you guys out there can answer it fairly easy! My website is over50choices.co.uk and whilst using the free tools in Majestic it said that I had: 77 Referring Domains pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk and only 35 pointing to www.over50choices.co.uk/ And in Moz it said: The URL you've entered redirects to another URL. We're showing results for www.over50choices.co.uk/ since it is likely to have more accurate link metrics. See data for over50choices.co.uk instead? Does this mean that my domains arent set up correctly and are acting as separate domains - should one be pointing to the other? Your help appreciated. Ash
Technical SEO | | AshShep10 -
%20 URL accessible, does this matter?
I have a rewrite on the CMS I work on. What happens here is that if someone creates a page on the website and uses spaces as the name then the CMS automatically replaces the spaces with -'s. I noticed this morning that the %20 URLs are accessible but not indexed at all. Only the - URLs are indexed. could this cause duplicate content or penalties? I know best practice is to have only ONE URL for a page but somehow the developer can't redirect the %20 URLs to the - URLs. Opinions?
Technical SEO | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Dynamic URLs via Refinements
What is the best way to handle large product pages with many different refinement possibilities. Ex. hard drive - 40 gigs - black case etc. All of these refinements add to the length of the url and potentially create crawling issues as the url is to dynamic. I have seen people canonical all refinements and pages to the main cat page, I have seen others no follow certain refinements. Also in the SEOmoz crawling report it tells me that over two parameters is bad. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Gordian0 -
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 | | rakesh_patel0