How Does App Store Deal With «,», «:», «;» and Trademark Symbols «®» and «™»?

Do they affect the indexation of the words placed next to them?

Answer: No, they don’t.

They are considered as spaces.

Introductions

In this article, we are going to examine the symbols «,» (comma), «:» (colon), «&» (ampersand) and the trademark symbols «®» and «™».
If you use them in Title and Subtitle without any spaces
(e.g., «App Store&Optimization»), will the words stick together?

Experiment

We decided to check how these symbols affect indexing for the words placed next to them.
We tested these punctuation marks in three locales: American English (EN-US), Australian English (EN-AU), and Polish (PL). After we replaced space with a mark in Subtitle, it became "Convert image,document to text".
To test the trademarks, we took French Canada locale (FR-CA).
After we added «®» to the app name, it became «Calendar®».

Results

The indexing for the keywords placed next to the registered mark remained unchanged in neither case. The ranking for the keywords placed next to the punctuation marks («image» and «document») remained the same.

After we added «®», the app ranking hasn’t changed either (the ranking for the keyword «calendar» remained the same). Therefore, Apple treats trademark symbols, punctuation marks, and ampersands as spaces. The keywords placed next to them are indexed just the same as usual.

Tips, life hacks, more interesting information — subscribe to our facebook and read new experiments first!