Does Using Pipes or Other Characters in the Title Tag Hurt?

Many designers like to use special characters in the title tags of web pages. This has been happening since the start of the web. Call it creative expressionism if you will. I have always found it funny, but at the same token saw some creative implementations over the years. So the question is does it hurt to use these characters from a search engine result point of view. The short answer is no it does not. It neither helps nor hurts because the search engines ignore these characters.

Now having said all of this remember that the title tag allows for a certain number of acceptable characters from an seo standpoint. The W3C, in their page W3C - The TITLE element in HTML, states: "The title should ideally be less than 64 characters in length. That is, many applications will display document titles in window titles, menus, etc where there is only limited room." A 64 character limit is a good starting place. Google will display up to 66 characters of a title tag, cropping to complete words for Search Engine Optimization & Web Usability.

Obviously, anything that serves to draw the search engine user's attention toward your title tag information will help get traffic to your website, but care must be taken not to overdo it!