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.
Use of + in url good or bad?
-
Hi,
I am working on a SEO project for a client.
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!
-
Our site uses the "+" and is has never hurt our rankings - we've held many #1 positions in Google. If I had to start the site all over again I'd use the dash instead but if you have pages that have been around for a while I wouldn't worry about it.
-
Thanks! All great answers, really helpful!
-
I agree with everyone here, go with "-". Take a day and rewrite all of your urls that are not using "-". Any other symbol usage can be problematic.
-
Yup better to use "-".
The + sign along with the & and % operands can be problematic for spiders and in some cases browsers too.
-
I would get those re-written to dashes for a few different reasons:
- Dashes are known as the best way to separate terms in URLS
- IMO dashes are easier to read by the user, and easier to remember thus more user friendly (just my opinion though no data behind this)
- Plus signs are often used in URL encoding or in query strings, both of which are not great for users, and both of which have been thought of in the past to look somewhat "off putting" to search engines compared to dashes.
So while it might be a pain I would say go to dashes.
-
Use "-" instead of "+"
Here is an article I always have bookmarked for URL Structure, even though it is from 2006, it is a good source of info from Rand.
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
-
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Self Referencing Links - Good or Bad?
As an agency we get quite a few of our clients come to us saying "Ooo, this company just contacted me saying they've run an SEO report on my site and we need to improve on these following things" We had one come through the other day that had reported on something we had not seen in any others before. They called them self-referencing links and marked it as a point of action should be taken. They had stated that 100% of the pages on our clients website had self-referencing links. The definition of self-referencing is when there is a link on a page that is linking to the page you are currently on. So for example you're on the home page and there is a link in the nav bar at the top that says "Home" with a link to the home page, the page you are already currently on. Is it bad practice? And if so can we do anything about it as it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation. I have not heard anything about this before but I wanted to get confirmation before going back to our client and explaining. Thanks Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Is it Detrimental to Repeat a Word in Our URL?
Hey guys! We run a tour company in Barcelona. Our company name is Barcelona Experience. We're customizing our URL's to include keywords which can be found in all the important areas on the page (title tage, meta descp., etc).
Technical SEO | | BarcelonaExperience
We want to change "www.barcelonaexperience.com/bike-tours" to "www.barcelonaexperience.com/barcelona-bike-tours"
We're worried the repetition of "barcelona" could be a bad thing. True, or not true? Thanks!0 -
Templates for Meta Description, Good or Bad?
Hello, We have a website where users can browse photos of different categories. For each photo we are using a meta description template such as: Are you looking for a nice and cool photo? [Photo name] is the photo which might be of interest to you. And in the keywords tags we are using: [Photo name] photos, [Photo name] free photos, [Photo name] best photos. I'm wondering, is this any safe method? it's very difficult to write a manual description when you have 3,000+ photos in the database. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TheSEOGuy10 -
URL - Well Formed or Malformed
Hi Mozzers, I've been mulling over whether my URLs could benefit a little SEO tweaking. I'd be grateful for your opinion. For instance, we've a product, a vintage (second hand), red Chanel bag. At the moment the URL is: www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150 Broken down... vintage-chanel-bags = this is the main product category, i.e. vintage chanel bags 2.55-bags = is a sub category of the main category above. They are vintage Chanel 2.55 bags, but I've not included 'vintage' again. 2.55 bags are a type of Chanel bag. red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag = this is the product, the bag **1362483150 **= this is a unique id, to prevent the possibility of duplicate URLs As you no doubt can see we target, in particular, the phrase **vintage. **The actual bag / product title is: Vintage Chanel Red 2.55 classic double flap bag 10” / 25cm With this in mind, would I be better off trying to match the product name with the end of the URL as closely as possible? So a close match below would involve not repeating 'chanel' again: www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag or an exact match below would involve repeating 'chanel': www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag This may open up more flexibility to experiment with product terms like second hand, preowned etc. Maybe this is a bad idea as I'm removing the phrase 'vintage' from the main category. But this logical extension of this looks like keyword stuffing !! www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/vintage-2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag Maybe this is over analyzing, but I doubt it? Thanks for looking. Kevin
Technical SEO | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Use of Meta Tag - MSSmartTagsPreventParsing
We've inherited some sites from another developer that had the following tag: All references I can find to it are from 2004. What is the purpose and is it worth including in pages/sites we build?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0 -
Why google index my IP URL
hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson
Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO0
