Is using dots in URL path really a problem?
-
we have a couple of pages displaying a dot in the URL path like
domain.com/mr.smith/widget-mr.smith
It displays fine in chrome, firefox and IE and for the user it may actually look better than replacing it by _ or -.
Did this ever cause problems to anybody?
Any statement from google about it?
Should I change existing URLs?If so, which other characters can I use in the URL instead of underscore and dash, since in our system dash and underscore are already used for rewriting other characters.
Thanks
-
Hi Andrews,
While the difference between dashes and underscores use to be a big issue a few years back its something that seems to hold minimal merit now. The two can be used rather interchangeably without any major impact. This was phased out around the same time as exact-match-domain value was as far too many people were abusing the long-tail dash page method.
-
While I've never come across this exact problem before I can share with you one my mantras that applies here:
"If a system (browser, search engine, etc) needs to perform a data re-write, you aren't accessible enough."
Google loves accessibility. It always wants the user to be able to easily access information and it wants it's spiders to be able to easily index and categorize the information. When accessibility options such as javascript versioning or if a site is using flash or not have an impact then it would only logically follow that more obvious structural access issues do come into effect.
From a technology stand point I can tell you that "." is not traditionally used in the scope of a URL/file structure as it a reserved character and therefore your structure is being re-written to display those. Much like international domains like the chinese internationalized domain name extension .中国 (which is basically a visual re-encode of the unicode: xn--fiqs8s) For the sake of accessibility, proper structure formatting and system practicality you should avoid using non-standard characters such as the . in your url
-
Hi!
As far as I know, this really isn't a huge problem (could be mistaken). I guess it depends...
In regards to readability, I prefer using dashes (-), as they tend to be easier to read. Underscores may be mistaken for a space). Here's what Matt Cutts had to say about this some years ago: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whitehat-seo-tips-for-bloggers/ (and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/)
I believe I have read that Google and other search engines read URLs like this when looking for semantic meanings:
- /this-is-part-of-a-website-address = this is part of a website address
- /this_is_part_of_a_website_address = thisispartofawebsiteaddress
At least that used to be the case...It could be changed now.
In your example, I would not obsess too much about it, as it gives perfect semantic meaning. Have you considered removing special characters, instead of replacing them with a "-" ?
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Anders
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
International Country URL Structure
Hey Guys, We have a www.site.com (gTLD) site, the primary market in Australia. We want to expand to US and UK. For the homepage, we are looking to create 3 new subfolders which are: site.com/au/ site.com/uk/ site.com/us/ Then if someone visits the site.com redirect based on their ip address to to the correct location. We are also looking to setup hreflang tags between the 3 sub-folders and set geo-location targeting in google search console at sub-folder level. Just wondering if this setup sounds ok for international SEO? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pladcarl90 -
Big problems with site traffic
Hello! I have big problems with website promotion. It's been 7 months and the attendance on the site is 1-5 people a day. I do not understand the reason. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Site: www.azartlist.com Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bobic1 -
What to use instead of a 404
Hey there Mozzers, What would be preferable to use instead of a 404 on a ecommerce website. Can I use a 301 redirection to the main category of the product? So for example if I have a t-shirt that is not available anymore can I use a 301 to redirect the traffic to the clothing category?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Question about using abbreviation
Hello, I have this abbreviation inside my domain name, ok? now for a page URL name, do you recommend me to use the actual word (which shortened form of it is inside domain name) in a page name? Or when have abbreviation in domain name, then using its actual word in a page name is not good? It's all about how much google recognize abbreviation as the actual word and gives the same value of word to it? do I risk not using the actual word? Hope made myself clear ) thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mdmoz0 -
Website Crawl problems
I have a feeling that Google doesn't crawl my website. E.g. this blogpost - I copy a sentence from it and paste it to Google. The page that shows up in search results is www.silvamethodlife.com/page/9/ - which is just a blog page with all the articles listed, not the link to the article itself! Did anyone ever have this problem? It's definitely some technical issue. Any advice will be deeply appreciated Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexey_mindvalley0 -
Long URL with QueryStrings
Hi, I have a search page that generates some querystrings (with the term, current page, number of pages etc). This long url is something bad for Google indexing? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GDB0 -
When using ALT tags - are spaces, hyphens or underscores preferred by Google when using multiple words?
when plugging ALT tags into images, does Google prefer spaces, hyphens, or underscores? I know with filenames, hyphens or underscores are preferred and spaces are replaced with %20. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrooklynCruiser3