Page Titles - Are There Any Restricted Characters?
fashezee
10:50 am on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
I'd like to know if anyone has been negatively impacted by using certain characters in their Page Titles? We'd like to replace the word "plus" with "+". ie. Cottage for rent with 4+ bedrooms
Can the + sign cause an issue?
goodroi
1:56 pm on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
For your situation, you will be fine based on my experience. Special characters can cause problems but that tends to be more because site owners try to get creative and misuse them for "artistic reasons" or go crazy with SEO stuffing etc.
fashezee
2:00 pm on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
For the example: Cottage for rent with 4+ bedrooms Do you think it would cause a problem?
tangor
2:49 pm on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
I'd be curious to know how many more bedrooms than 4 there might be (in the given example).
The plus (+) sign is generally used in math but has, by usage, come to mean "and" and/or "combined with". Just watch where you use it.
I doubt there are any "restricted" characters, but there are some which are frowned upon such as those used as "decorations" (arrows, bullets, asci style attention getters)
engine
5:24 pm on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
The first thing to consider is whether you're using it as a marketing ploy, or to catch the type-ins. Most people don't type or speak special characters into a search, so it's only useful from a visual perspective. But, even so, certain symbols are probably best avoided. Arithmetic symbols might be a problem in Google and Bing in case people type them in as a calculation. Additionally the + is usually ignored or rewitten probably because of Google Plus when it removed the search operator.
Google will display the special characters, of course, with exceptions, however, if a user can't type it, it doesn't really add value unless it's just to stand out in the SERPs.
How does it look on mobile?
I'd certainly be interested to know how well it works for you.
fashezee
6:19 pm on Apr 13, 2016 (gmt 0)
Our intentions were to just reduce our Page Title length; it also looked a little sharper: '4+' vs '4 plus' OR '4 or more'. However, this thread has convinced me to not take any chances on something trivial.
