Would sybol like # on the URL hurt SEO?

[skuba]

I need to add a symbol that is not a dash or a slash to my already SE friendly URLS. I need to add that because I have to make a new rule and use a different symbol.

I was thinking about using #
so the URL would look like
www.domain.com/widgets/blue-widget#24536.htm

How do SEs see the # symbol? Would that be ok? Any better symbol to use?

I guess google would actually see widget#24536 as 1 word.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks a lot

[andrew_m]

Won't it load the part before the sharp and then look for a tag inside the page? '#' is a bad choice, it's a special symbol.

[SEOMike]

Running a Google search on "widget#24536" produces results for widget and 24536 but does NOT show any results of the # symbol.

A simple search for # with or without quotes produces nothing. An ACTUAL BLANK PAGE in Google... No message saying no results found... just blank.

I'm guessing based on this that Google just ignores the symbol all together. Very interesting. I don't think it will hurt your results or help them.... Might help them by splitting up widget#24536 if you make the numbers something more SE friendly.

Good luck, and thanks for inspiring a little research and thought!

[skuba]

Yes, I don't think that Andrew is correct. # is not like a?, = or &. But I mean I am not sure, maybe google sees that as a symbol of dynamic content.

But, SEOmike, I am also not sure that justthe searches you did on google would prove anything. Because if you also search for blue?widgets, will see that google searches blue and widgets separately. But we all know that google doesn't like? on URLs.

[andrew_m]

What does it have to do with google? Your server simply won't see that URL -- it will only see /blahblah/widget instead of /blahblah/widget#123.html

And then, if you server does return something for /blahblah/widget your _browser_ will look in the page for <A NAME="123.html">. That part never gets sent to the server.

[skuba]

I don't see a reason for this message be moved from the SEO forum. It's a SEO issue!

[skuba]

Andrew, I see your point. But consider that all the URLs are going through a .htaccess mod rewrite rules.
So, the server will actually never look for #1234, because the rewrite rule will transform it to
&offer=1234

What do you think?

[andrew_m]

I am pretty sure the server will not get that part of the url at all. So, no matter what rules you put in, there is no string for them to work on. That part is stripped out of URL by peoples' browsers.

If dashes and underscores are a tabu I'd use asterisk probably. It looks funny, but technically I think it's OK.