Plus Sign In The Title Question? Options

[ezinestein]

Hi,

Does anyone know if putting a plus (+) sign in the title would have a negative effect in any way?

Example Title:

Search+Engine+Tips+and+Techniques

How would search engines view that? Does a plus sign mean anything to them, or are they just ignored, etc?

Thanks for any help that you're willing to offer for this strange question.

Kindly,
ezinestein

[Jill]

Welcome ezinestein! (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye1.gif)

I can't answer your question...but I gotta ask...why would you want to put the plus sign in the Title to begin with?

You're talking Title tag, right?

[Randy]

Well, some search engines use the plus sign as an AND operand.

No clue how they would treat that in the title, because I would stay away from anything like that just to make sure there's no confusion.

That said, doing an exact search for a plus sign only at Google returns no pages.

This post has been edited by Randy: Mar 13 2005, 11:16 PM

[Kal]

Hello ezinestein

From what I understand, there are some characters and symbols that search engines can’t or won’t index if they are found within your tags. Depending on the search engine, these can include @, #, $, %, &, * and ? but I'm not sure what happens with +.

Perhaps it is ignored - Randy's research seems to suggest that. But why risk it? I'd leave any unusual symbols out of your tags altogether (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/crossfingers.gif)

[respree]

Can't comment for all the search engines, but in Google,

this search, would seem to suggest it's treated just like an alpha or numeric character (using a one word search)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=prints%2B

[magellan]

You might need a + sign for some phrases, e.g. 'DVD+R media'.

[lisphacker]

You might need a + sign for some phrases, e.g. 'DVD+R media'.

Correct. If the plus sign is appropriate for your phrase, use it. Using it to signify a logical and operator won't do anything for you.

[Randy]

Right, if it's needed I would use it. But only if it's needed. I certainly wouldn't stick a plus sign between words where it doesn't make any sense.

As to my little example above where nothing is returned, I'm not sure what to make of it honestly. Most likely nothing. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

I can produce the same thing by searching for a period in quotes for an exact match. However if I can get stuff to appear if I use a "phrase" that I know will appear in various pages.

For instance, I know that all of Rackshack's (now EV1) Plesk servers are initially configured with a hostname of plesk.rackshack.net. If you search for that phrase(?) Google will actually try to think that's a domain. On the other hand if you search for plesk.rackshack.net email you'll get all kinds of pages returned. (I only know to look for that one because hostname and email problems/questions come up often.)

By the exact search for the period only you would think it's treated as a special character. But by the full phrase search that happens to include a period you would think that maybe it's treated as a real character.

Conflicting information for sure. I could argue both sides of the equation. (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/lol.gif)

[Webnauts]

Hello ezinestein

From what I understand, there are some characters and symbols that search engines can’t or won’t index if they are found within your tags. Depending on the search engine, these can include @, #, $, %, &, * and ? but I'm not sure what happens with +.

Perhaps it is ignored - Randy's research seems to suggest that. But why risk it? I'd leave any unusual symbols out of your tags altogether  (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/crossfingers.gif)

Kal did I understand you right? Could the "&" symbol coded as "&" can cause problems with indexing by major SE?

[Edvin Eshagh]

I've found that the plus sign (+) in title did not effect page ranking in Google.
(I did not check the results in other SE at the time).

[Jill]

I've found that the plus sign (+) in title did not effect page ranking in Google.

you, I'm not sure I understand your comment. Could you please elaborate?

[Edvin Eshagh]

In an effort to optimize one of our pages I changed few elements at a time and noted the effect on search engine results. One of the single modifications included paraphrasing the title and using a plus sign (+) in it (i.e. “Online Income Tax Preparation + Electronic Filing”)

After I verified that the page was revisited by googlebot (from the logfiles), I waited a few more days to ensure the page was re-indexed (verified by “cached” link). I then checked the search engine results for a searched term (i.e. “Income Tax Preparation”).

I found that replacing the sign (+) with comma (,) did not change the results. It is worth noting that I only checked for terms that were yielding to 1st page ranking both before and after modifications (i.e. the primary key phrases appearing before +).

[Kal]

Kal did I understand you right? Could the "&" symbol coded as "&" can cause problems with indexing by major SE?

Yes, I believe it can. I did read this at a couple of source sites but I'd need to dig them up. Can anyone clarify?

[Edvin Eshagh]

Yes, I believe it can. I did read this at a couple of source sites but I'd need to dig them up. Can anyone clarify?

Kal, I believe you are talking about stop words (typically found in title) which includes the word "and". Since & (&) is interchangable with the word "and" it stands to reason why & is considered a stop character.

Also, I just want to mention that, it is best to use "&" instead of "&" since the latter would not be a valid HTML.

I don't know to what extend stop words effect SE indexing, but I tend to avoid them.