Is &#9733 (star) dead?

Doesn't seem to display up anymore

[ogletree]

I just did a search that I know showed the star in their title by using &#9733. It is not there anymore just the box in IE and the? in Opera. This is in the actual SE SERP not the title when you go to the page that has never worked.

[IanTurner]

Seems fine from here

[pageoneresults]

ogletree, I'll bet the powers at Google were following those threads closely and fixed the issue. If you think about it, that star symbol could be construed as some sort of award by the non-savvy searcher. You know, like a site that has been cooled.

[dukeblue219]

The stars still show up for sites I check. Google has not done anything about it yet, and I don't think they will... but I could be wrong. Sticky me if you want an example.

[austtr]

By "star" do you mean an actual star shaped symbol? I've been seeing some solid arrow-heads at either end of the SERP title line.

[celenoid]

Just noting, I've read a lot about the "9733" star & spam debate. As a web developer/designer running Linux, I've seen this technique used with quite different results.

Konqueror (default Linux browser), NEVER renders the star in SERPS, it *does*, however, render a little star in the title of the browser window when displaying a page that has used this technique...

Seems to nullify the question of spam IMHO...

[skipfactor]

I've got hearts & arrows for days...

[2_much]

You're right Ogletree they closed that down. They were starting to appear everywhere, but now I did a search that always had them (symbols, not just stars), and they're not there. Too bad it really highlighted the listings.

[IanTurner]

Still appear to work from here in the UK, also working ATW, Altavista but not Teoma.

[PatrickDeese]

I've noticed if you use G's language preferences it tends to switch them to?'s otherwise it still works.

[too much information]

I have a few stars showing up for my listings but not every time I search. I think it may depend on which server you get when you search.

[toolkit]

I'm still seeing it - even saw a skull & crossbones the other day o_O

[killroy]

Guys, do a view source...

You will notice that Google returns different character sets, sometimes utf-8 sometiems the ISO one... It depends on the URL parameters but I've also seen it vary with browsers and time of day...

In a way it'S a bug if inconsistancy. I sure wish they'd do a massive clean up of their returned HTML some day.

In the meantime, ALWAYS check view source when you see/don't see special characters. You will find almost certainly that nothing has changed today or in recent months. Nothing but the every reliable inconsitency and variety of google.

SN

[nakulgoyal]

I still see them working. :-(

[onedumbear]

For most se's & browsers, any of the keys on your keyboard will sho up correctly such as ***
For most se's & browsers any special charecters that use an alpha code † will usually display correctly.
The codes that work correctly the least often are the numeric ones &134; that use the & symbol in front and the numeric ones without † .

[anallawalla]

I think it depends on the data centre being used. I have two test pages, one with a solid right pointing triangle and one with a square root symbol. The latter is nearly always seen properly, sometimes as the letter "V". The triangle is seen at times but more often shows up as three?. In the business SERPs where I hang out I have never seen the star other than in a screen dump posted by someone, but I see some rectangles.

[onedumbear]

the individual google datacenters may often not show any type of special charecter (except whats on the keyboard), but when the datacenter is updated into the main, they generally work again.
This also applies to ink. They don't work in ink, but they usually do in the msn results.

[domingo]

I can still see solid arrows on first page of a particular term "domain registration" for two listings. I am on IE6, however in Opera they appear as?

:(

[graywolf]

I am seeing the bullet character used two times on the begining and end of bizrate titles. They aren't using the character codes for it they are actual bullets when you view source.