install piwik it will tell you how many times that url with the pdf was downloaded, also awstats which usually comes standard on cpanel will tell you the number of downloads.

If you a symbol in the title of a webpage will this dilute the keywords in the title
thus making it rank worse in search engines

here is an example

<title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title>

versus

<title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title>

will the extra symbols count as words and thus the dilute the effectiveness of the Black Shoe Polish keyword. sort of making like 4 words instead 3.

By the way, The reason to use a symbol is to make it stand on in the search engine results