Should I use pipes or dashes in my titles?

Should I use pipes or dashes in my titles?

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Added on Tuesday 15 September 2009 15:48:54
by GoogleWebmasterHelp
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Blind Five Year Old from San Francisco, CA asks:

"Does Google have any suggestions (or data) on the impact of pipes versus dashes in the title tag?"

This video is part of a "Grab Bag" series in which Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team, answers questions from webmasters. We're not currently taking new video questions, so your best bet for getting an answer about webmaster-related search issues is to head to our help forum:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en

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Comment(s)

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agapitoflores001

I very much agree to this one! Good answer for the question.
Sunday 13 November 2011 00:03:33
neurodude1

What about a colon?
Monday 19 September 2011 10:20:25
theNewCodingFrontier

I think it is best to use pipes to separate site names from topics.. siteName.com | Test Page and reserve dashes for other things
Wednesday 15 September 2010 23:39:55
benwebholdings1

I think there is another answer to this question.... dashes win with usability in the sense that every one is going to know ho to use a dash and will be able to easily type it in a browser and they will ofcourse see it. pipes will have better click through bc they are less intrusive or alienaiting. Dashes are tacky looking, so are pipes but pipes go over looked. use pipes.... actually use dashes. ha.
Tuesday 14 September 2010 01:09:31
nalexander21

are there any delimiter considerations - like using apostrophies in titles?
Friday 23 October 2009 14:18:20
veryveryblessed

Your videos are short and to the point. I like that. Very good information.
Wednesday 30 September 2009 09:18:45
goprocamerahawaii

awesome! i'm stoked that i found this page, you guys give a lot of useful tips. aloha
Wednesday 30 September 2009 04:38:31
JoesHouses

A pipe symbol is the verticle bar. It is the shift-\ key. \ is the backslash. That key is right above the "Enter" key. So, shift-backslash will give you the "pipe'.
Tuesday 29 September 2009 19:38:43
Hinpaki

+1 but are u sure abt this?
Sunday 20 September 2009 13:13:30
designfans

I'm pretty sure a pipe is a | which is not an ell "l"
Wednesday 16 September 2009 11:39:22
BruceAchterberg

What are "pipes"? And these (e.g. these: "»") are chevrons, right? I know what a hyphen is ("-"), and I know what an en dash ("") is and what an em dash ("—") is, but I've never heard of pipes before.
Wednesday 16 September 2009 11:34:22
MattCutts

Good point. In general, I usually prefer hyphens over almost anything else.
Wednesday 16 September 2009 10:41:17
wis3384

its amazes me when he do his move with his hand....(just kidding) back to the topic...we usually see websites that uses ">" or ">>" is it also considered the same?
Tuesday 15 September 2009 20:04:12
seoinseattle

If you have a pipe in the middle of a group of words and someone searches for those word as an exact phrase the version with pipes will not show up, but the version with hyphens will.
Tuesday 15 September 2009 19:07:06
ShawnKHall

The biggest issue with parameter separators in the title is that some characters are not supported in various operating systems for the file system, so when a user bookmarks the page (which in some situations will then sync to a webservice), the bookmark will be renamed. This effectively replaces many characters with either a dash or completely remove the character. In most cases, pipes and chevrons are completely removed, while dashes, commas and other characters are preserved as intended.
Tuesday 15 September 2009 18:54:04
TheBoredSwede

How about » and other similar chars?
Tuesday 15 September 2009 16:04:55