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Is it a bad idea to use characters with accents or graves within URLs?
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Is there an issue using within the URL for a page words with accents or graves, for example including "Estándares"?
Thanks
Stuart
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Thanks for the quick response!
I take your point on board, it certainly sounds valid. The site has been internationalised, so there is an English version among others, so anyone searching for English words should find the English version before say, the Spanish. These characters are also only on a few pages, so further down the hierarchy.
The SEOMoz web crawl came back showing these pages as 404's, but the likes of "Screaming Frog" came back with response code 200's.
Thanks again,
Stuart
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From usability side, you need to remember that not all users will use keyboards required to entered special characters.
Having special characters within URL might have negative effect to page accessibility.
Kind regards
Bojan
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