11 replies to this topic

[b-cubed]

Hi,

Just wondering what is the best practice when it comes to ampersand character codes in the title tag.

By ampersand character codes I mean & for an ampersand (&) and > for greater than (>) etc.

Do you

1) leave them as "&"
2) change then the "&"
3) modify the title so that it contains the word "and"

Thanks for any responses in advance.

[dharrison]

The few times I've used them, I've used & which seems to work.

HTH

[rolf]

As far as I can tell it's fine whatever way you do it, so & vs. & makes no difference and & vs. and should be made based on what you think looks best.

I believe most (all?) of the engines consider and/or/not/etc. to be boolean, so it doesn't even matter from a search query point of view either.

[dharrison]

If you're validating your pages, the W3C validator chokes on '&'

Either "&" or "and" is the workaround.

HTH

[b-cubed]

As far as I can tell it's fine whatever way you do it, so & vs. & makes no difference and & vs. and should be made based on what you think looks best.

I believe most (all?) of the engines consider and/or/not/etc. to be boolean, so it doesn't even matter from a search query point of view either.

mmmm I think that they must consider "and" different to "&"...

as my site has a different ranking in google if you use "x and y" rather than "x & y" but it is a phrase that normally contains an "and" (like salt and pepper / cheese and onion)

what should you do in cases like this?

stick to 1 phrase or go 50/50?

[Jill]

My guess is that most people use the word "and" when searching, not the & since you have to hit the shift key to use it.

[b-cubed]

My guess is that most people use the word "and" when searching, not the & since you have to hit the shift key to use it.

That's logical.

I will make most of my pages use "and" but leave at least one using "&" just in case anyone does use that in their search.

[qwerty]

I wonder what percentage of searchers have taken the "The "AND" operator is unnecessary -- we include all search terms by default" message to heart and started searching for [this that] instead of [this and that]. Personally, I drop the conjunction unless I'm searching for an exact phrase, or I'm selecting text that happens to include it and searching on that from a right click.

[drmadcow]

I usually base these things on Validations. If the validator doesn't complain its fine

[torka]

Uhmmm, maybe I'm missing something. But how does a validator tell you which version of the phrase the real human users are going to be using in search? Cuz, ideally, that would be the one you'd want to optimize for, I would think.

--Torka

[oneofthe3lions]

I personally have tested both these versions.

'and' is still used more than '&' by searchers. However with the serps trying to dismiss the and type words the difference in serps in negligable and only really with 'exact' phrase matching'.

We choose to keep '&' (entered as &amp) as it looks tidier in my opinion to the viewer. Also I dont have the 'should i capitalise the first letter of the word' situation.

Also, it can depend on the way we speak of course.. I would suggest that we actually say & ('n' 'un' etc) mentally as oppose to 'and' So to most of us 'cheese n onion' not 'cheese and onion' therefore the sound of the word can make a impact.. I think that '&' keeps the connection between the words better.

[webd]

If you want an ampersand it is correct to use & and not &. It won't validate because certain characters (like ampersand and angle brackets) should be substituted with html entities.

For more information search Google for html entities...