We are currently replacing all special characters and spaces in our URLs with hypens (-). In terms of SEO and readability, this works great. However, in some cases, we pass parts of the URL to the search after hyphens are removed. The problem arises when the search term must have hyphens, as it does not return any results when they are removed. We could change the search algorithm that we use, but it will slow it down (especially bad, since we use it with the AJAX-ed search box, and this should be fast).
The best option to handle this, as far as we can tell, is to replace the pre-existing hyphens with pipes (|). I have a feeling that this will have a negative impact on SEO for these terms, since the channel symbol will be considered as part of the word, and not as a separator. As far as I can tell, the only characters that are considered delimiters are hyphens and slashes (/).
So my questions are:
- Are there any alternative characters that we can use to represent hyphens?
- If we cannot use any other symbols, what effect will the use of the pipe symbol in the search engine have?
Cheers zac
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