Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
It seems that you’re referring to the Ampersand (&) character. I’ve tried replicating this and it reads that character from the keyword
However, if you’re referring to the page source showing as this
It will be converted automatically when Google picks it. You can verify the same by checking your meta in any SEO tool like heymeta.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you need further assistance with anything else.
Thank you for your quick reply. When I change the & my rank jumps to 70 but when refreshing it goes back to 20. How can I make it so that I don’t lose the ranking?
Hello,
When you write & in the title, Rank Math looks for its character reference i.e & amp;.
As we only match exact match keywords, & and & amp; are treated as different and that is the reason the SEO score drops after refreshing.
Please note that the SEO score and guidelines are just for your reference and you can ignore the tests and use & in the title, it won’t affect your SEO.
I hope this helps. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you for your quick reply. I understand that the score is only for reference but do you have a recommendation for getting around the & amp; that will allow me to still use the &? Thank you.
Hello,
You can use & in your post title or if you want to edit it through Rank Math snippet editor use & amp;(without space) as it would be converted to &.
You can disable the Keyword in the Title test if you want to have a good score, add this filter to the theme’s function.php.
add_filter( 'rank_math/researches/tests', function( $tests, $type ) {
unset(
$tests['keywordInTitle'],
);
return $tests;
}, 10, 2 );
I hope this helps. Looking forward to helping you.
Thanks for your reply and for your help! Does it matter specifically where the filter code is placed within the theme’s function php?
The & is in the title, Community & Public Affairs but it’s converting it to & yet rankmath doesn’t recognize the word. I placed the code at the bottom but that did not change anything. I look forward to hearing from you. Ann
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up, and sorry for the delay.
The filter should be added at the very bottom (last line) of your active theme’s functions.php file. Once done, please clear your website’s cache and you will notice this test will no longer show:
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Hi,
Unfortunately, that does not appear to be working. See link. https://www.loom.com/share/2e5f7a3fa86643e789b5f5a584b9296e It does not appear to be holding my changes in the description.
Thank you for any insight and help you can provide.
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up.
I’ve checked your screencast, and it seems that the Keyword in the Title test has already been disabled. If you’re referring to the other test, you can use and customize the filter like this
add_filter( 'rank_math/researches/tests', function( $tests, $type ) {
unset(
$tests['keywordInTitle'],
$tests['keywordInMetaDescription'],
$tests['keywordInContent'],
);
return $tests;
}, 10, 2 );
You can also check this link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/kb/disable-seo-content-tests/
But please stay advised that these tests are just guidelines and one does not need to follow them religiously.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you need further assistance with anything else.
Still not working but the bigger problem and question is – why is Rankmath not saving my keyword changes?
I think I’ve figured it out. It seems that the keyword & snippet updates do not work when making them in Elementor but only save when editing Rankmath in WP editor, update the page, then clear the page cache. For the &, it has to be its own keyword entry. If you mentioned that, I did not understand.
This case is resolved.
Thank you.
Hello,
If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
Thank you.
