What it is
Spaces and unencoded special characters in URLs break links and look untrustworthy. URLs should use clean, encoded, predictable characters. Unencoded or awkward characters. Encoding issues, broken links, duplication. Use clean ASCII slugs. Low-medium. Inferred.
Why does special characters/spaces in urls matter for AI search?
Encoding issues, broken links, duplication.
How do you fix it?
Use clean ASCII slugs.
How do you find it on your site?
- Scan URLs for spaces, accents or special characters.
- Check whether they appear unencoded or awkwardly encoded.
- Replace spaces with hyphens and avoid special characters in slugs.
- Ensure anything that must remain is correctly percent-encoded.
Which ranking and citation factors does it touch?
Messy or unencoded URLs can break sharing and crawling and undermine trust. Clean URLs are more robust and more clickable.
What is the impact?
Low-medium. Inferred.
What is the evidence?
Keep URLs simple and clean. Google Search Central, Keep a simple URL structure
Frequently asked questions about special characters/spaces in urls
What does "Special characters/spaces in URLs" mean?
Unencoded or awkward characters.
How do you fix special characters/spaces in URLs?
Use clean ASCII slugs.