URL contains non-ASCII characters

This means that the URL in question contains characters outside the ASCII set.

Why is this important?

This is dangerous as you cannot be certain how search engines or browsers will handle these characters, which could cause unwelcome results if there are issues with the encoding procedure (when the URL contains characters that have not been escaped, they need to be encoded by browsers and search engine crawlers).

What does the Hint check?

This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which contains non-ASCII characters.

Examples that trigger this Hint

Here are a range of examples that would trigger this Hint:

• https://sitebulb.com/Folder/øê.html
• https://sitebulb.com/Folder/øê.html?大学
• https://sitebulb.com/Folder/þorn.html
• https://sitebulb.com/Folder/中央大学.html

Why is this Hint marked 'Potential Issue'?

This Hint is a 'Potential Issue', which means that it is unlikely to be affecting the site at the moment, but should be investigated as it could cause issues in the future.

We recommend that you don't use non-ASCII characters in URLs, so if possible move to a system that does not use them. If you are struggling to get buy-in for such a change, investigate if the URLs in question are being escaped properly, and if users or search engine crawlers are having issues accessing them.