The truth about question marks and "free" in text.

[Iris Wood]

I recently read again, and I haven’t heard it for a while, that when the search engine finds a question mark that they stop indexing. Well my search engine positions don’t reflect this and I do have many question marks, especially in the page I am about to publish. I notice some of the big time marketers still have question marks in the text.

If this is true how can you get away without one without having to rewrite a whole lot of new text? Time I don’t have. Just leave them out and have someone pick you up for leaving them out.?

Also what is the latest about using "free" for the same reason? Some newsletters I receive break the word up with a space or symbol. I haven’t heard this for a while either.

please advise
Many thanks in anticipation

[Anita]

I've noticed this, too. I suscribe to a newsletter that places an umlat (sp?) over one of the e's in "free". This same newsletter also replaces the a in "spam" with the @ symbol. I'm not sure, but I think that it may have to do with search engine results. Ok, I really don't know how to articulate this correctly, but some words are starting to be suspect, and in order not to fall under suspicion, use spellingvariations on suspect words, like "free" and "spam". I could be wrong, and hopefully, someone more knowlegeable will come along and set the record straight.

[mondine]

I suppose both could be symptomatic of the same trend.
You could see why a newsletter would want to avoid terms that could send it
to the spam trash by a filter. That could be triggered by words like "free" and even "spam"
(I don't know how much spam I've seen that contains the phrase "this is not spam". )

I don't know if it applies to search engines, but it seems logical to think a similar mechanism is taking place.

[Iris Wood]

Thanks guys

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