Brackets vs Encoded URLs: The "Same" in Google's eyes, or dup content?

[mirabile]

Hello,

This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you!  Scenario:  Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D

Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]**=all&howdy**[]**=all&ciao**[]**=all
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]**=all&howdy**[]**=all&ciao**[]**=all

Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content?  Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp)

We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference.   We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character.  _

We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Mirabile,

This is a difficult one. My understanding would be to use the hexadecimal encoding of potentially unsafe characters (of which a square bracket would be) in a URL (i.e. %5b instead of [ ), but I think assuming the URLs are the same, then it makes no difference.

But that said, whilst Google might read the URLs as the same, that's not to say another search engine will do that as well. And then, what about how a browser might interpret a URL encoded differently but being effectively the same?

Probably, the main danger is that the search engine or the browser won't be able to follow the link with unsafe characters in at all.

I'm not sure that is the full answer you were looking for, but maybe someone with more expertise will be able to shed more light on this for you.

I hope my answer helps at least in part.

Peter

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

I wouldn't worry to much on this issue, it's true that you don't want to depend on the level of the Googlebot to find out if this could be an issue but I think that the encoding of characters will make sure you'll be fine. As a suggestion I would say use canonical tags on of these pages to direct Google or other search engines to the right page. This makes sure you'll never get an issue with duplicate content. However I really doubt that this will turn into an issue.

[mirabile]

Thanks guys - yes, we're using canonical tags already to help resolve this, but I'd like even better if we didn't have to resort to this. It also makes me nervous that these characters are technically classified as "unsafe", but I haven't been able to find any official word from Google on whether or not they will index URLs with brackets or not.  It's definitely not the web standard....