URL contains special characters — the fix
This URL contains special characters (such as spaces, brackets, pipes, or other non-standard characters) that require percent-encoding. These make URLs harder to read and share.
Where this fits: crawlability in SEO
Crawlability is whether search engine bots can physically reach and read your pages. Before Google can rank anything, Googlebot has to fetch it: follow links to it, receive a successful response, and parse the HTML. Crawl problems are silent — the page looks fine in a browser while bots hit walls (robots rules, broken chains, server errors, infinite URL spaces). Because everything downstream depends on the crawl, fixing crawlability issues usually unlocks more value per hour than any other SEO work.
Why url contains special characters hurts your rankings
Special characters in URLs get percent-encoded (e.g., space becomes %20), making URLs ugly and difficult to share. Some older systems and crawlers may have trouble with encoded URLs. Clean, readable URLs are preferred by both users and search engines for clarity and trust.
This is a low-severity issue: a polish item. Fix it in batches during scheduled maintenance; the win is cumulative quality, not a step change.
How to fix it
Remove special characters from URLs. Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens in URL paths. Set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to clean versions.
Crawlability best practices
- Keep robots.txt minimal and deliberate — block admin/duplicate spaces, never CSS/JS assets.
- Maintain an XML sitemap that lists only canonical, indexable, 200-status pages, and reference it in robots.txt.
- Keep every important page within 3 clicks of the homepage.
- Return proper status codes: 200 for content, 301 for permanent moves, 410 for gone — never soft-404s.
- Collapse redirect chains to a single hop; update internal links to point at final URLs.
- Keep URL parameters under control — infinite filter/sort combinations burn crawl budget.
The full library: SEO best practices, by category.
Frequently asked questions
What does "URL contains special characters" mean?
This URL contains special characters (such as spaces, brackets, pipes, or other non-standard characters) that require percent-encoding. These make URLs harder to read and share.
Why does url contains special characters matter for SEO?
Special characters in URLs get percent-encoded (e.g., space becomes %20), making URLs ugly and difficult to share. Some older systems and crawlers may have trouble with encoded URLs. Clean, readable URLs are preferred by both users and search engines for clarity and trust.
How do I fix url contains special characters?
Remove special characters from URLs. Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens in URL paths. Set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to clean versions.
How serious is this issue?
This is a low-severity issue: a polish item. Fix it in batches during scheduled maintenance; the win is cumulative quality, not a step change. It belongs to the crawlability family of checks.
How do I find every page affected by this on my site?
Run a free Dr Urls audit: it crawls your site, detects url contains special characters on every affected page, shows example URLs, and generates a ready-to-use fix task. Re-scan after fixing to verify the issue is gone.
Does your site have this issue?
A free Dr Urls audit crawls your site, finds every page affected by url contains special characters, and hands you a ready-made fix task.
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