: How would a search engine see url encoded characters? I've got my URL however some of the strings would contain &. Obviously I can't use them as best practice so I've replaced them with

@Si4351233

Always use the URL encoded %26 if you must have an ampersand in the url. If you use the un-escaped m&m in a querystring, your server is going to see this as 2 empty "m" GET variables, the 2nd of which will overwrite the first. I don't know about IIS, but on a PHP/Apache server you will wind up with this:

using PHP's var_dump($_GET);:

?m%26m:

array
'm&m' => string '' (length=0)


?m&m:

array
'm' => string '' (length=0)


Google is smart enough to decode escaped urls, and none of your SEO matters if your querystrings in you links are broken ;)

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