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How Google Treats Punctuation

Using punctuation in Google search results is the reason for constant misunderstanding and rumors. Meaningful punctuation, like the “#” in C#, hyphens and apostrophes can have a direct effect on how Google serves results, and ranks your site.

I have summarized both the confirmed data and webmasters’ observations I’ve been coming across in the table below:

Not ignored “Meaningful” punctuation C++ and C#
Boolean operators exact match “free online encyclopedia”
“exclude” the term (no space before the word it is related with) – don’t confuse with hyphen dvd -player
“add” the term (no space) advanced +search
Money signs DVD player $400
Underscore symbol (treated as a letter) quick_sort
Advanced operators / shortcuts colon between two words (no spaces) site:google.com
Synonym search ~apple
Partially ignored / undefined Hyphen The mixture of hyphenated, single-word and two-word spelling variations [air-condition] and [air condition]
Apostrophe matts and matt’s and matts’
Ignored All the rest Compare: apple, windows and apple windows and apple: windows and apple=windows

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Ann Smarty Brand amd Community Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas

Ann Smarty is the blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. Ann’s expertise in blogging and tools serve as ...

How Google Treats Punctuation

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