Question

I’m using Code Igniter to build a simple website, one thing about Code Igniter its that its pretty easy to do Rewrite Rules. But anyway, that ain’t the problem.

But lets consider this situation, in this website most webpage itens, if the name its to be spelled correctly the name as special characters ( á à é è …. mostly used in non English languages) and spaces.

Lets take a look at this url (localhost test)

http://localhost:88/Ensino/Frota de Veículos

This url as a rewrite rule that relays the user to Class ensino and the function frota_de_veiculos which it would be the same if we go to:

http://localhost:88/ensino/frota_de_veiculos

However if you enable source view with Firefox, the source view title will display the url this way:

http://localhost:88/Ensino/Frota%20de%20Ve%C3%ADculos

Now my question its simple which Url will Search Engines consider in they crawl through the website?

I ask this because i once saw a website with Url rewrite using special characters and spaces, and in Google Search would display weird urls like this one: http://localhost:88/Ensino/Frota%20de%20Ve%C3%ADculos

Note: Keep in mind that the navigation bar pinpoints to http://localhost:88/Ensino/Frota de Veículos.

Answer 1

It would see “Frota%20de%20Ve%C3%ADculos”, since that is the public facing URL and the version is the underscores is only used internally.

URLs cannot include spaces, which have to be represented with %20. Some browsers display literal spaces in the address bar instead of %20 to make them more readable. Similar issues apply to non-ASCII characters.