Can i use Swedish characters like ö or å in a url?

Question

I am using mod_rewrite to append the title to a URL like this.

http://www.example.com/3453/göra-innehållet-sökbart-på

Will it create any problem if I use Swedish characters or words in my URL for making it SEO friendly?

Answer 1

From an SEO point, no it won't create any problem.

But if you call you pages using swedish characters in your URLs like this, it will output URL encoded characters. (it's like using the url_encode(); PHP function ).

In short :

http://www.example.com/3453/göra-innehållet-sökbart-på

Will become :

http://www.example.com/3453/g%c3%b6ra-inneh%c3%a5llet-s%c3%b6kbart-p%c3%a5

In Germany, they replace special characters in the URLs like this : ä ->ae In France ç -> c ...

From a reading point of view, it would be better to rewrite your special characters. From an SEO point of view, it doesn't really matters.