Using ~ (tilde) as a keyword separator in the link

Any impact to SERP position?

[Tastatura]

I just came across link structured like this:

www.example.com/keyword2_sm/keyword1~keyword_phrase~keyword2.html [/url]

Are there any implications/benefits of using ~ as a keyword separator? (there are discussions on WW about using hyphens and underscores as kwd separator but I never saw one about ~ ).

I know that ~ can be used in Google’s search query to denote synonym to a keyword, so can link structured as above somehow be able to take advantage of that (to get better/broader ranking in SERPs, etc.)

keyword2 – is a general term describing action
keyord1 – is a brand name
keyward_phrase – is composed of two word ‘part name’; keyword3_keyword4

This site ranks at #2 for search term “keyword1 keyword3 keyword4” in G

(I did more analysis of their use of META tags, keyword density, etc., but showing them that might lead to straying from my main question regarding use of ~ in the link)

[tedster]

In earlier days of the Internet, before HTML 3.2,. the tilde character (~) was explicitly NOT allowed. It had to be encoded as %7e. While this restriction was later relaxed, there are still a few reasons not to use the tilde character directly in a url.

1. Although today's networking software may handle the tilde, this doesn't mean that other software used to analyze web content will not have trouble. Search engine algorithms come to mind -- I don't know for sure and I'm not willing to take a chance.

2. Log analysis software also comes to mind -- it will be OK if character conversion is performed at the browser or server level first, as happens with "most" of these apps. Otherwise, who knows.

3. Webmasters actually typing your urls, rather than doing a copy/paste, may also not get it right. For one thing, not all keyboards even HAVE the stand-alone tilde character and these will require keystroke combinations. This could cost you backlinks.

4. The tilde is not widely known as a stand-alone character, but only as a diacritic mark above a basic character in some languages -- such as the widely recognized Spanish (ń) character. If your link is lucky enough to get a press mention in a newspaper or magazine, a stand-alone tilde might well be typeset as a hyphen.

5. The tilde is among the ascii characters whose positions are sometimes replaced by regional/national alphabet letters. For example, the code position that tilde is assigned in international ascii has u umlaut (ü) in several variants of Ascii, the German sharp "s" (ß) in German ascii, etc. So beyond the keyboard problems I mentioned earlier, this oddity can sometimes cause incorrect representations on both screen and paper

Even the %7e substitution can be a problem. When a % is handwritten, it might later look like an ampersand (&) for instance.

It's been quite a few years since the absolute prohibition on using tilde in a url was relaxed, and standardization has moved ahead rapidly. But why play with it at all, given the potential for chaos.