Enter the text that you wish to encode or decode:
What is URL Encoding?
URL Encoding or Percent Encoding is a process of encoding certain special characters or unprintable characters like “Space” by replacing them with valid URL format to make it universally accepted by the web browsers.
Which Special Characters are allowed in a URL?
According to several sources, the characters that are allowed in a URL are either reserved or unreserved. Besides these two, any other character is not allowed in a URL. Now understand the meaning of Reserved and Unreserved characters.
Reserved Characters:
Reserved characters are the letter or symbols that are used for a specific purpose. In other words, characters like “\, / * are reserved by Operating System and can’t be used while saving a file., :, and,
If used in URLs, these characters have a possibility of being misunderstood by certain reasons. When reserved characters are not used for special purpose within a URL, they need to be encoded.
Following reserved characters used in a URL are:
! # $ ‘ ( ) + * / : ? @ [ = ]
Unreserved Characters:
Characters that can be used in a URL and not reserved for specific purpose are called unreserved characters.
Unreserved Characters include uppercase letters, lowercase letters, hyphen, decimal digits, period and, underscore.
Following unreserved characters used in a URL are:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z - _ . ~
Why we need URL Encoding/Decoding?
As we have already discussed that URL Coding or Percent coding is used to translate reserved or unreserved characters into a special format that can be sent over the internet. URLs made with ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters set are only accepted by servers or web browsers. But URLs are often designed with the characters outside ASCII set.
is ASCII code?
ASCII is a abbreviation of American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It was designed as first character set used for computers over internet. Basically ASCII is a 7-bit character set that contain total 128 characters: numbers from 0 to 9, uppercase English letters from A to Z, lowercase English letters from a to z, and some special characters including space, ! “ # $ % & ‘ ( ) * + , / . and, -. The characters that are used in HTML language and, modern computers are all based on ASCII character set.
Therefore, we need to convert those URLs into a valid ASCII format. Now, what should be a better option other than using CheckYourWebsite free Encoder/Decoder Tool. You can use this free tool to either encode/decode a string of text. Since a URL doesn’t contain spaces. Therefore, this SEO Encoder/Decoder Tool normally replaces a space with plus (+) sign or with %20.
How URL Encoding Works?
URL encoding or Percent encoding is a method to encode several special characters contained in a URL. A website URL is made using a number of characters. The characters that are allowed in a URL string are alphabetic characters, numerals and a few special characters. The most commonly encoded character contained in a URL string is “space”. This character is normally encoded with a “+” sign. If “+” sign is contained in a string, it always represents a “space” character. Encoding of a URL can also be done manually. Just simply replace the special characters contained in the URL string with their encoding strings and you are almost completed. However the process can be hectic and time consuming for a large number of strings. So, we would like to recommend you to use CheckYourWebsite free URL Encoder Tool. The tool will replace all the special characters with their encoding string within a few seconds only. It is very important to encode any special character found in a URL.
1. $ (Dollar Sign) becomes %24
2. + (Plus) becomes %2B
3. & (Ampersand) becomes %26
4. , (Comma) becomes %2C
5. : (Colon) becomes %3A
6. ; (Semi-Colon) becomes %3B
7. = (Equals) becomes %3D
8. ? (Question Mark) becomes %3F
9. @ (Commercial A / At) becomes %40
Know Exactly Characters Should be Coded?
Any character that is non-alphanumeric & ( ) – [ { } ] : ; ' , ? / * is going to be coded on your page.
ASCII Control Characters: All ASCII characters need to be encoded as these characters are not printable.
Non-ASCII Characters: These characters are not legal in ASCII set. That's why these characters should be encoded.
Reserved Characters: These characters need to be encoded when not used for their special role within a URL.
Unsafe Characters: Characters that comes under this category have maximum chances of being misunderstood and some systems can easily modify these characters.
For example, the characters “<” and “>” are safe and must be encoded.
How to use URL Encoder/Decoder Tool?
CheckYourWebsite free URL Encoder/Decoder Tool starts working when you enter a string of text in the above empty box. Now, you need to click on submit button. The online free tool will show the instant result in two halves.
Encoded URL
Decoded URL
URLs can be transmitted over the internet using ASCII character set. Since, a URL usually contains characters outside ASCII set, so it becomes mandatory to be converted these characters into a usable and more readable ASCII format.
Use CheckYourWebsite Encoder tool to replace any reserved or unreserved character included in a URL with a percent (%) sign followed by two hexadecimal digits. The tool will replace the desired character with these three characters i.e a percent sign and two hexadecimal digits.