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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?

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.

Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
3
4
4.7k
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.
  • Yosef
    Yosef last edited by May 13, 2015, 6:33 AM

    Has somebody any experience (pros or cons) to using utf-8 symbols in the Title or in the Meta Description tags?
    Expedia uses it:
    http://prntscr.com/74ofrv

    74ofrv

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Dr-Pete
      Dr-Pete Staff last edited by May 19, 2015, 8:07 AM May 18, 2015, 3:10 PM

      Google is officially supporting some emoticons. I talked to one big-brand SEO last week who has tested it with a fair degree of success. A couple of warnings:

      (1) Testing the impact on one title tag is a fair amount of work, so it really has to be a high-impact SERP. This isn't something you want to spend days on across thousands of results.

      (2) Make sure the character/symbol really is relevant. People focus on the first two words of a headline, and that emoticon may well take the place of one of those words, so make it count. I wouldn't do this just because you can.

      (3) Not all characters render properly on all OSs and devices. Make sure to test.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • Yosef
        Yosef last edited by May 13, 2015, 7:45 AM May 13, 2015, 7:45 AM

        Thanks for your Answer Ikkie, but my question was especially about using "utf-8 symbols in the Title/Meta tags".
        Should I use, or not?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Mustansar
          Mustansar last edited by May 13, 2015, 7:37 AM May 13, 2015, 7:37 AM

          that there are no real pros or cons in where you place the TITLE element within the HTML document’s HEAD area. However, although this is nothing whatsoever to do with SEO, I do remember reading that in an HTML document, the best practise is to include the TITLE after the first META tag that declares the content-type and/or charset value(s), e.g.:

           <code><title>[Placeholder Title]</title>
          
            […]</code> 
          

          (I am fairly certain that this technique is stated somewhere in the W3C Recommendation, HTML 4.01 Specification, in the section "The global structure of an HTML document" ( …but if I would double-check this.) Although I think the technical reason was to ensure titles that contain HTML entities that need to be escaped should always declare a character set before you provide the actual text, it still makes you think: is source-ordering important?

          At the very least, it is conventional wisdom to always place the content you want to gain the most exposure in terms of SEO/the search-engines' results pages (SERPS) higher up in the web pages (X)HTML source code (e.g. in a website without any META description tags set, the first paragraph in the document will probably be the one chosen to represent that webpage’s description in its SERP listing, not the second or third etc., etc.) Ultimately, I would say that you certainly have nothing to lose in placing this TITLE (or any content) higher.

          You can also see the guidelines for this on the MOZ blog link here

          https://moz.com/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            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

          • Choice

            How does Google handle fractions in titles?

            Which is better practice, using 1/2" or ½"? The keyword research suggests people search for "1 2" with the space being the "/". How does Google handle fractions? Would ½ be the same as 1/2?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 1, 2019, 10:14 AM | Choice
            2
          • jonmc

            Translating meta tags using WPML and AIO SEO

            Having a heck of a time finding info on this one... We're working on a multilingual website which uses WPML. I've used the All in One SEO plugin to customize meta data (title, description, etc). These strings do not appear in the list of translations in WPML. Does anyone have any experience with this setup? How do you enable WPML to translate meta data set via the AIO plugin? Thanks!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 24, 2018, 7:25 AM | jonmc
            0
          • srbello

            Are rel=author and rel=publisher meta tags currently in use?

            Hello,  Do these meta tags have any current usage? <meta name="author" content="Author Name"><meta name="publisher" content="Publisher Name"> I have also seen this usage linking to a companies Google+ Page:Thank you

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 12, 2017, 2:16 PM | srbello
            0
          • davidkaralisjr

            Author Byline in Page Title in SERP

            I was exploring my company's visibility in Google News results, and I noticed the author byline in a recently published article was being pulled into the page title in the SERP. See the attached image for a screenshot. It makes it sound awkward: "How to Find the Best Cannabis Experience and High for You Patrick..." - as if we're explaining it to some guy named Patrick? We have the byline the same way in all other posts, but this is the first I've seen this happen. Has anyone seen/had this happen, and if so, have any ways to prevent it? Thanks in advance for any insights! Here's the post URL: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/how-to-find-best-cannabis-experience-high csvmF

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 23, 2017, 3:49 PM | davidkaralisjr
            0
          • partnerf

            Canonical tag - but Title and Description are slightly different

            I am building a new SEO site with a "Silo" / Themed architecture.  I have a travel website selling hotel reservations.  I list a hotel page under a city page - example, www.abc.com/Dallas/Hilton.html   Then I use that same property under a segment within the city - example www.abc.com/Dallas/Downtown/Hilton.html, so there are two URLs with the same content Both pages are identical, except I want to customize the Title and Description.  I want to customize the title and description to build a consistent theme - for example the /Downtown/Hilton page will have the words "Near Downtown" in the Title and Description, while the primary city Hilton page will not.  So I have two questions about this. First, is it okay to use a canonical tag if the Title and Description are slightly different?  Everything else is identical. If so, will Google crawl and comprehend the unique Title and Description on the "Downtown" silo? I want Google to see that I have several "supporting" pages to my main landing page(s).  I want to present to Google 5 supporting pages in each silo that each has a supporting keyword theme.  But I'm not sure if Google will consider content of pages that point to a different page using the canonical tag. Please see this supporting example:  http://d.pr/i/aQPv Thanks for your insights. Rob

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 19, 2013, 9:57 PM | partnerf
            0
          • Bio-RadAbs

            Meta tags - are they case sensitive?

            I just ran the wordtracker tool and noticed something interesting. The tool didn't pick up our meta description. It's strange as our meta descriptions appear in organic search results and Moz never reported missing meta descriptions.After reviewing other pages,  I noticed our meta description tag is written as the following: name="Description" content=" I never thought about this, but are meta tags case sensitive? Should it be written as: name="description" content=" Thoughts?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 11, 2013, 7:35 AM | Bio-RadAbs
            0
          • bjs2010

            Why does Google add my domain as a suffix to page title in SERPS?

            Hi, If I do a search in Google - for one our products on our site, our site comes up - but it would appear that google is adding our domain name as a suffix to our title in the results... Anyone else seen this? Can I do anything about it? I would prefer it not to appear. Thanks!

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 21, 2013, 12:39 PM | bjs2010
            0
          • ShashankGupta

            Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 character?

            Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 characters? I have this question that what is the disadvantage if my meta title is 150 character? Why everyone focus in keeping it short ? If i put all my important keywords in starting of title tag say in first 65 characters and keep the title 100-150 character how can it hurt my website? Google will consider 65 character, right but it won’t penalize me for having 110 character then please explain Why we focus so much… 🙂 I know i used too many why 🙂 just to tell i am nt a lawyer 😉 just trying to act like one 🙂 , just kidding.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 9, 2011, 11:10 AM | ShashankGupta
            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
          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.