Headlines that search engines ignore

Comma is fine, and so is hyphen in headlines. Maybe you can use the question mark, the exclamation mark and the percentage symbol. But after that put a full stop to non-alpha characters.

Reason: headlines that use non-alpha characters are ignored by search engines.

They are like stop words, and the search engine spiders do not index such stories. So, please do not use characters like / : * ? “ or | * [ ] | { } in headlines.

You should also avoid writing headlines where colon is used after the first or second word. Headlines like “Chidambaram: India will fight Maoists” are unlikely to find favour with search engines.

The headline should be recast to “India will fight Maoists, says Chidambaram” or “Chidambaram firm on fight with Maoists”.

You should also hit the stop button for headlines that run over 65 characters. Most search engines truncate headlines after the 65-count mark.