Line break between keywords

Does this impact on Search performance

[webboy1]

Hey, I've been doing this a while now, but have come across this one particular issue with which I just can't seem to find an answer. I assume the lack of information on it means it's not an issue at all, but I thought I'd ask.

Is there any impact if a line break is put between 2 keywords (2 words the make up a key phrase)? For example, imagine my key phrase was "red shoes", but my main navigation was split over 2 lines, meaning when looking at the source code, "red shoes" is actually seen as "red<br>shoes".

Is this good? Bad? or will it have no impact at all?

[Receptional Andy]

That's an interesting question, webboy1, and not something I've ever tested.

My guess would be that the tag might seem to separate the words, and split into into two single occurrences rather than a phrase.

Certainly this is what should happen if the tag separating the words was block level (like a paragraph, for instance) but probably shouldn't if the separator was a <span> or something like that. A line break is probably closer to a paragraph than a span.

One way to test this would be to find an occurrence of two words breaking in this way, and try a phrase search on Google and see whether it matched. I can't think of an example off-hand to try.

[kumar]

definitely the it is not a single word when u have <br> in between them

[topr8]

it doesn't make any difference when you have

keyword_1 <strong>keyword_2</strong>

so i shouldn't think a line break would make any difference

[webboy1]

Topr8, that is a good point actually. I hadn't thought about it like that. We have a number of other changes we need make as well, so my guessing is that even if the line break does have an affect, then it will not be huge.

Thanks for all the feedback. We'll move on with our other changes and see where they get us before deciding how to move forward with the line breaks.