Spaces in the URLs found in results

[ephramzerb]

Why does google seem to arbitrarily add spaces to the URL it displays underneath every site listing? For example, do a search for "arbitrary keyword" and you'll notice that some of the organic results, have URLs printed out like:

blog.thought-mesh.net/ solidwallofcode/mt_projects/webiki.php

omicspace.riken.jp/PosMed/ search?objectSet=mutant&species=Mm

Notice the space before "solidwallofcode" and "search". The actual link points to the proper URL (not the one with the space).

Any insight into why Google is doing this and why some pages and not others?

[rkeefe]

I have seen this happen to some of the sites we manage as well. I can't find any reason for this happening from a site coding / file naming perspective, so I'm interested in what the experts have to say.

[rkeefe]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? :)

I do wonder about this though.

[palms]

They add the space to long urls so the page won't scroll horizontally.

[g1smd]

Not quite.


If the URL went all the way across the page, and there was adwords stuff on the right, and the long result was the first or second, or third result, then that result with the long URL would be pushed down the page to appear after the end of the adwords box.


I did see this in action a few weeks ago. For a particular search, the #1 organic result was in the normal place on the page, but then there was a massive vertical gap between it and the second placed result.

That 2nd result had one of those massive ?OpenDocument type URLs that really needed to have two breaks in it to let it properly wrap.

The URL did have one break in it, but the second part of the URL after the break was still long enough to touch the right hand side of the browser window.

The result was therefore positioned just below the adwords box, and had a very large blank space above it.

The rest of the page continued normally.