Searching Google with symbols

[Hawkhead]

Hi,

I tried to check whether the symbol "#" was good to use in the url of inner pages and found Google did not fetch the results for any symbols except "&" symbol.

Do any answer why is that so.. If any person need to check the name of any symbol or for other uses How can they search.

Also using # symbol in internal url is good or not. Will search engine bots index that or not..

- Austin

[tedster]

The underscore character "_" is another indexed symbol (1.5 billion results).

But you're right that many typographical glyphs or characters cannot be directly searched. And even when they can be, it's not a sure thing that the results would show you the correct name for the symbol. If you're looking for the correct name, I'd suggest searching for Unicode symbols and examing one of the many charts and tables that are online.

The hash mark "#" (also called a pound sign or number sign, depending on usage) is used in a URL to indicate a fragment identifier [w3.org] and a link to URL#word scrolls the window down to the position on the page that is indicated in the source code by id="word".

If the # symbol is used in any other way, then that URL may well confound Google and other search engines.

Because AJAX scripting often uses the same mark to indicate different states of the page's content, Google has proposed a new convention that follows the # with a ! - see Making AJAX Page States Crawlable - Google's Proposal [webmasterworld.com]

[TheMadScientist]

id="word" ... name="word"

I think you meant name="word" for a link (<a name="word> identifies the fragment to display) and typed id="word" thinking about ways JS and AJAX could be used for changing the display. (document.getElementById('word').style.display="block" + <div id="word"> would display the 'hidden' content within <div>)

Just wanted to try to eliminate confusion for those who don't know the difference off the top of their head and might wonder why <a href="#word">word</a> <a id="word">text</a> might not work.