Bracket URL Alert, What Every SEO Must Know
As a branding content curator I urge digital leaders to read this concise, vital update on URL handling. Google clarifies that raw square brackets, and their percent encoded counterparts, are treated as different URLs. John Mueller explains Google crawls both forms, de dupes identical content, and then selects one canonical version. The takeaway is simple, choose one format, encode brackets, and maintain consistency across links and metadata. Mueller notes browsers may encode brackets differently, and server behavior can create soft equivalence. His advice is pragmatic, do not expose raw brackets, prefer percent encoding consistently across scripts and links.
This post explains RFC 3986 implications, browser behaviors, and how encoding choices affect indexing decisions. It quotes examples and practical guidance about internal links, sitemaps, canonical tags, and structured data. If you manage site architecture or technical SEO, this concise analysis will save debugging time and future proof crawls. Read the original to align your team and prevent surprising indexing outcomes. Also note, other crawlers may not match Google’s logic, so audit any third party fetchers. Act now to standardize URLs, and prevent indexing surprises. Start with canonical tags.
Source: www.searchenginejournal.com
