xhtml Special Characters and SEO

E.g. Can search engines understand & instead of &?

[DigiFundi]

Hi,

I was just wondering if search engines can deal with XHTML special characters? For example can search engines understand that & is the same as &?

If not, how do you go about making your website is search engine optimised as well as make it adhere to accessibility and coding standards?

Thanks for your time.

DigiFundi

[msgraph]

Do you mean like this?

[google.com...]

Where the title has & in the code but is treated as & when searching for &?

Sorry if I read your question wrong.

[DigiFundi]

That was a fantastic answer msgraph!

Thank you. It's all the evidence I need!

Pity I didn't think of searching for a similar character myself.

DigiFundi