★ Using a star in your title

Saw a site do it and am in two minds of trying it myself

[alxdean]

saw it and loved the idea. the html code is: ★ and when I saw a website use it I thought I was flipping. OK, the title on the web browser shows an empty box as it is not meant to decypher HTML codes but obviously Google picks up on it.
I read and reread the google guidelines and can't find anything in there telling me I can't use html characters in my title, well it might clash with

"Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

but hey, SEO is not black and white. so where is the grey line.
the biggest fear I have is that my competition will pick up on the fact and start doing the same. would be a shame!

so what is the general consent? use it while it is still allowed or stay away from such "cheeky" tactics?

[fLaMiN]

Whenever I have seen this technique used in the past (it's been going for years), I have always assumed that it is a spammy site and avoided it.

Well if you are in this forum, you are generally smarter than the average joe and your not the sort of traffic that most of us are trying to attract with techniques such as this one.

Dont get me wrong, i'll never click on one either, if anything its a beacon that we can use to avoid traffic sites.

If it happens enough, you will train yourself to ignore them like a banner ad!

[AsleepATheWheel]

Well if you are in this forum, you are generally smarter than the average joe and your not the sort of traffic that most of us are trying to attract with techniques such as this one.

I would say that they are certainly more awair of spamming techniques, but I also think this one is so blatant that it would be picked up on very quickly, I know I did a long time before I started visiting these forums, or even running any of my own sites.

[James_Dale]

This is natural progression, is it not? I can't see it being banned! Ultra-spam is clearly the future of the internet. I certainly don't believe search engine listings will remain plain text listings for the next ten years.

Eventually, PPC providers (and currently free search engines) will allow pictures, mini-banners, animations, etc, and these will completely dominate the results pages.

I anticipate people will eventually turn away from search engines to find what they're after, and instead go straight to their favourite directory, where picture adverts are paid inclusion, and only included if suitable - just like the yellow pages.

I've seen a few examples of people using the star in their title tags ... you can't stop the inevitable. We'll look back on this discussion and laugh in 10 years. Same as everything else, quality drops as profits rise :)

[rfgdxm1]

>I would say that arguably putting stars at the start of your title degrades the quality of google's results and a spam report could be justified.

I doubt this is an issue. A penalty is really inappropriate here. If this is a problem, the problem exists only because Google made the decision to show stars in page titles. Google could simply just decide to not show the stars, and the problem goes away across the board. And GG has stated that Google prefers algorithmic solutions to hand to hand spam fighting.

And, I still say the concern that other search engines might choke on this is something to be considered. People won't want to click if they see on a SERP a site that starts with ★

[sabai]

Ultra-spam is clearly the future of the internet

Could well be true, I can imagine MSN looking like this. However, people go where they get good results, I think - why google took off like a rocket. I think there will always be a simple, text only SE.

I still say the concern that other search engines might choke on this is something to be considered

MSN displays the star, hotbot trims it out (I know this from my inktomi listings), Ask.com trims it out, teoma trims it out. Yahoo shows it, but sometimes with a question mark instead (google results).

Can't say for any other engines - I have never seen ★ displayed in a SERP though.

[edit]Not quite true about hotbot - depends which database you chooose to power it. It cuts the star out of my inktomi results, wheras MSN leaves it in though.[/edit]

[sean]

These little buggers certainly caught my attention in the SERPs. And of course I was searching on keywords, not symbols, so I was still a highly qualified visitor. But could these be the next BLINK tags? If so, it would not seem to unduly harm Google:

If the left side has too many funky character, the right side will look that much more appealing.

If everyone adds these characters for Google, the other engine's results (?) will (?) look (?) worse.

[rfgdxm1]

I added a bullet at the beginning of the title of the home page of one of my sites. Less likely to cause problems with some search engine out there than the star character. It does make it stand out more.

[sean]

<added> If other search engines simply cut it out, Google could simply cut it out. I fail to see how some people could think this could be a cause for penalties.

[ronin]

flamin>

Do you go in for bulk mail too?
It works astonishingly well I hear. >;->

Actually, I'd even recommend setting up a self-executing ActiveX application which automatically resets the user's browser homepage to your site. >;->

You don't have anything to do with KaZaa, do you?

[fLaMiN]

Do you go in for bulk mail too?

My friends call me "The Bulker"

Actually, I'd even recommend setting up a self-executing ActiveX application which automatically resets the user's browser homepage to your site. >;->

You're telling the story. Send me your script :)

You don't have anything to do with KaZaa, do you?

I am "The Real Napster" .. I wrote the original Napster, not that Shawn Fanning guy, he called it Napster because I was napping when he stole the idea from me!

LOL :)

[Dave_Hawley]

.

[fLaMiN]

:)

[onedumbear]

I have noticed ALOT of lycos "bizrate" sites listed in google that begin with **.

[mayor]

I always thought those sites with a star had something to do with paid listings so I ignore them.

Now that you've called my attention to this, I'll know they are SEO manipulated sites so I'll ignore them even more.

What a great way for Google or Inktomi or anyone to flag your site as a SEO suspect and jack up your spam score. Why don't you just put a big sign on your site that says "herin probably lies lots of dodgy techniques"?

[AsleepATheWheel]

Well posted Mayor,

I couldn't agree more.

[born2drv]

I'm going to go with rfgdxm1 on this one. Google will not penalize for this, that would be foolish. Other types of spam are designed to deceive google to get an inflated ranking that they don't deserve. This is just someone trying to put a catchy title that people will click more frequently on.

If Google wants to stop this problem or feels people are abusing it, they will simply not make it display the star any longer. The &#9733; code showing will certainly be an eyesore and quickly removed by webmasters.

There's no reason to penalize because the site is still highly relevant for whatever keywords it managed to rank for. You're just depriving users of relevant content that was thoroughly checked for spam.

[anallawalla]

saw it and loved the idea. the html code is: &#9733;

My browser (IE6) is set to UTF-8 encoding but I cannot see a star - just a rectangle. What is the trick?

[MonkeeSage]

anallawalla:

See post #38

Jordan

[anallawalla]

See post #38

Hi Jordan, I certainly did, but it didn't tell me which browsers *can* see it. IE6, Opera and Mozilla don't and if they can, how?

[MonkeeSage]

In my testing Mozilla / Firebird nightlies can see it (I think because they use iconv), and Opera 7.11 can see it. Tested using Arial font on WinXP. IE6 I can't get to see it no matter what, but I think that some localized versions might be able to because they have to support 'wide' characters for the local language fonts, not certain about that though.

Jordan

[ct2000]

I think Google may have done something with this ..
this AM I had the star now I only have a? ... looks like they may have "fixed" it ...

[Clark]

I think Google may have done something with this ..
this AM I had the star now I only have a? ... looks like they may have "fixed" it ...

Heh heh, welcome to webmasterworld. The biggest community of knowledgeable people who are scared to share the really good stuff which "teaches the competition" as another user stated. But not only do the tricks teach the competition but Google too ;)

Brett, maybe you should shut this place down. Heh heh heh, just kidding. :)

[ct2000]

:)

[robertskelton]

Mine just appeared with a big beautiful star :), works in Mozilla too.

[Dave_Hawley]

I still cannot believe serious Webmasters would do this. It's so tacky and cheap, looks spammy and a waste of perhaps THE most important part SEO. At the very least it dilutes the Title.

I have checked the profiles of the ones that are doing this (and silly enough to brag about it here :o)) and formed a list of SEOC to avoid :o)

Dave

[fLaMiN]

Did you look at my profile Dave? Did you exclude me in your list?

[msr986]

Have no fear, Google will have the final say on whether or not the stars will stay. You had better believe that by now GoogleGuy has read this post. He's probably in a meeting right now with all the mucky mucks trying to come to a conclusion on this. My guess is that the stars will NOT be rendered in the future.

[metagod]

obviously .. so add them today, then when they get un rendered take them out!

simple!

[fLaMiN]

He's probably in a meeting right now

Excellent. Is this a weekly meeting? Then those people in the meeting have another monthly meeting to discuss what they should change, then another bi-monthly meeting to organise with programmers what should be done, then a quarterly meeting about when they should upload new versions of the SERP rendering scripts ..

THEN .. after maybe 4 months .. do you reckon they will change it?

I want to know how fast Google will take to change something .. EVEN with the help of us here pointing it out for them and GG reporting back ..

[msr986]

Of course Google may decide to impose a penalty for those that have stars, after all, you guys have created a big bright SEO banner pointing right to your sites! ;)