Use of & nbsp; to avoid awkward typography

How cleanly can Google et al. handle?

[rjohara]

I'm in the process of designing a new menu layout for a site, and I would like to sprinkle in a number of non-breaking spaces to keep short menu phrases from wrapping awkwardly.

Has anyone done an actual test/check (rather than a guess) to see if a phrase with an & nbsp; in the middle of it can be found correctly in a Google search? Is "blue widgets" exactly the same as "blue& nbsp;widgets" from the point of view of search? It should be, but is has anyone tested it in practice?

[rjohara]

<bump>

(I have to stop working late at night... ;-)

[sonjay]

That's a good question, but unfortunately I have no idea.

You could sidestep the issue, though, by assigning "white-space:nowrap" in your stylesheet to those menu items. Then you wouldn't need to worry about &nbsp; characters.