Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Saurabh Rawat on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 07/18/2019).

Using plus sign in the URL

Is Google have any issue if I use + sign in the url?
Example -https://online.resumehelp.com/+resumes+laborer+dawn-wilkins…
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Becky Westmoreland: It’s not great to choose but if it’s already like that it depends- how long have urls had plus signs? Are there bigger issues? Etc
  • Saurabh Rawat: Becky Westmoreland all 600k pages have this issue
  • Becky Westmoreland: If the urls have been live for several years - it may or may not make sense to update
  • Ben Jablonski: plus signs are (or at least used to be) reserved characters meant for use in URL encoding and/or query strings, and could possibly confuse spiders. I would expect google to have the ability to work with it, but google themselves still don`t recommend +`s.

    i`d probably go ahead and change the +`s to hypens ("-") and set up the 301`s from the old urls to the new
  • Saurabh Rawat: Ben Jablonski what type of confusion Google face?
    Could you plz share Google support docs on this.
  • Richard Hearne: I would never redirect all my URLs unless I had a very good reason to do so. Potentially one of the most destructive changes you can make to a site. If you`re using + in URLs now and see no problems then DO NOT go redirecting all your URLs.
  • Richard Hearne: And now I see the message above about 600K URLs. You do not want to add redirects to 600K URLs unless absolutely needed.
  • Saurabh Rawat: Richard Hearne how too many redirects bad for the site. 2 years ago I had redirected 600k http urls to https and helped to improve ranking. Many websites change their url structure of entire website. I mean this is common people change all urls. Is there any Google guidelines or statement on this. Plz little more explain.
  • Richard Hearne: HTTP > HTTPS is a change that Google expects, supports and has automated. It`s entirely different from you adding manual redirects to a very large number of URLs in the hope that Google will actually find these in a timely way.

    I work with sites in hundreds of MMs of URLs, and believe me you`ll likely be waiting a very long time for Google to pick up those changes, especially if your site doesn`t have enough PageRank to support a very high crawl rate.

    Unless you have an actual problem you`re fixing here (and clearly from comments you`re unsure), then why take a very risky chance of changing something?
  • Saurabh Rawat: Richard Hearne thanks I got it.
  • Saurabh Rawat: Thanks everyone

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 07/18/2019).