Using alt-codes such as ? in META title / description

[digitalarts]

Noticed a search result recently that really caught my eye and certainly stood out among the other 10 results on the page, the META description contained the following snippet:

"Learn more about our ★★★★★ rated service..."

Any opinions on how using such alt-chars might effect search positioning when used in either the title or description META tags? The starts certainly looked very different to anything else on the page...

The claim of 5 star rated service was pretty much accurate so it was genuine and fair to use it...

[AlanMosley]

i think it looks spammy myself. Just my opinion

[irvingw]

My guess is this won't help and can only hurt in the title tag, since it is used for determining rankings, but could be used with no negative or positive rankings effects in the meta description which is not part of the ranking algorithm.

So I would experiment with this as a method of increasing click thru rate and test it on a small number of URLs.This could be an alternative to getting stars on a search result when you don't actually have ratings on a page that can be displayed by using microformatting.

[zharriet]

I agree with Alan that if you put the stars in like that it looks spammy.

Perhaps the stars you are seeing are coming from reviews that are showing because the site is using Schema.org vocabulary on their pages.

See this excellent blog by CraigBradford:

Schema.org - Why You're Behind if You're Not Using It...

These stars are legitimate and the kind worth posting, but it will be some work for you.

HTH

[irvingw]

Well if Google is cool with it and it greatly increases click thru rates, it may be worth exploring.

Maybe not  five stars in a row (that looks a bit over the top)  but using a heart for example could be a good eye catcher.

[YannickVeys]

A big player in the clothing retail in The Netherlands (where I live) is using it succesfuly. Look at this query and their results:

http://www.google.nl/search?q=zalando

Use it wisely. I agree with Alan that it can look spammy. So use a meta description viewer so you can immediatly judge if wat you made looks OK in the SE's. It definitely draws in my attention.

[SL_SEM]

From a design standpoint I would say it could definitely be spammy if used obnoxiously. Similar to people using multiple exclamation points to get a point across.

From a marketing standpoint if it improves your CTR to put it into the description I say go for it.

I would however keep it out of the title tag.

Knowing that the title tag is heavily weighted I would try to get the best text in there as possible and provide context that helps your rankings and your CTR.

Finally I believe it has been mentioned in several places that using special characters in title tags is not the best idea as you aren't always sure how they will be treated by bots, or play with the algorithm.

So to me I would say use it tastefully (showing off your star rating is probably OK), and I would probably only put it in the description since this isn't heavily weighed in rankings, and is just used for messaging most of the time anyway.

[AlanMosley]

I agree if it works them who am i to say it spammy, but then, what works for one person, may turn others off. but if the overall numbers increase then go for it.

Yanniocks example looks ok, not so spammy.

[DaveSottimano]

Just my opinion here, since you have some great answers already:

I might be completely alone on this, but I definitely would encourage testing. Mock up some SERPs and do some user testing with Mechanical Turk to judge if it looks spammy, enticing etc..

Here's an example from Australia - Look for Travel Insurance Direct (should be #1) http://dis.tl/vph36j

I think it might be the only way we can add our personal touch in SERPs and I love creativity. Good luck!