Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

[ZAG]

Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated.

Thank you!

[BrightHealth]

For your reference:

• http://moz.com/community/q/is-it-ok-to-use-encoded-special-characters-in-meta-titles
• http://moz.com/community/q/are-ampersands-in-title-tags-helpful-or-harmful
• http://moz.com/community/q/using-commas-in-the-tittle-tag

The general thought is that they will take up valuable ranking landscape, since your title lengths are limited to begin with.

watch?v=jHSqLYUPq8w

[ZAG]

Interesting information. Thank you.

[donford]

They will not negatively effect your SEO. In general the pipe character " | " is used to separate title segments. Further situations make sense as well like "&" is used to shorten "and" since "and" is generally of no value. Thus, "&" saves you 2 characters.

For example the title of this page is:

Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions | Moz Q&A

Hope this helps,

Don