: Should I avoid using brackets in my URL? I'm using a (very good) developer in Ukraine and he insists on using brackets in the URL of my search query. (I can't remember why) http://example.com/search/?Search[term]=go&Sea

@Ogunnowo487

The characters [ and ] are not allowed in the query component of a URI.

If you want to have these brackets displayed, you’d have to percent-encode them, i.e.:
example.com/search/?Search%5Bterm%5D=go&Search%5BStore%5D%5Baddress%5D%5Bcity%5D=Oslo&Search%5BStore%5D%5Baddress%5D%5Bcountry%5D=NO



Your SEO question doesn’t seem to be so much about the brackets, but about choosing between, for example, Search%5BStore%5D%5Baddress%5D%5Bcity%5D=Oslo and city=Oslo. The first variant contains the additional keywords "Search", "Store", and "address". This can be good, bad, or irrelevant. If used in many of your URLs, it’ll most likely have no impact on ranking.

I’d go with the more user-friendly variant. As far as I see, there is nothing of value that these additional generic keywords and the brackets would add for users or search engines, so why make the URLs longer than necessary?

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@Shelley277

From SEO perspective it does not matter which one you use. Either approach will not effect you SEO directly. It might effect your CTR because the URLs look messy.

When it comes to SEO, the issue here is not really about which way to output the URL's (like your way better) but what to do with the generated pages. You have two options:

1. If you want your search pages indexed

a) Make sure that there are unique titles and descriptions for each search query page. This is often missed.

b) Use Google Webmaster Tools to handle parameters

2. If you don't want your search pages indexed

a) Block search bots from crawling them in robots.txt

b) Set noindex on all search pages

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