How does Google handle German special characters in URL and/or keywords?

[milkyway]

Hi folks,

my web sites are German, and alas, a lot of the relevant words include German special characters. But I guess my questions are also relevant if you work with French accents or other special characters...

(Short explanation: German contains several additional characters called umlauts: ä, ö, ü. They CAN be spelled out to ae (= ä), oe (= ö), ue (= ü) and everybody will understand that. However, most people when they do a search in Google e.g., use the correct spelling with the umlauts.)

I have a few questions related to those special characters and was hoping you folks could help me...

• If one of my keywords contains such a special character, and I build backlinks in which that character is spelled out e.g. to ae, will those backlinks still work for the keyword with the umlaut?

• Similarly, does it make a difference in the meta tags etc if I use the keywords with umlauts or spelled out? Do I need to use both variants? Or will Google automatically "translate" one into the other?

• For domain names: For a few years now, you can register domain names (with German .de ending) with umlauts. I.e. I could register "www.käse.de" instead of "www.kaese.de (the translation is "cheese", and yeah, it's lunch time over here...). Will I run into any trouble SEO-wise if I use umlauts in domain names?

• Again, for domain names: If my main keyword contains an umlaut, does it make a difference for SEO if I choose a domain with or without the umlaut?

I guess my questions boil down to: Could I simply not use the umlauts, just spell them out in my keywords etc, and still rank for the keywords with umlaut in the search engines? That would make life so much easier...

And vice versa: If I use umlauts e.g. in URLs, will that hurt in any way?

I know that's not the most pressing issue for most of you , but I couldn't find any relevant information elsewhere -- any thoughts appreciated!

Cheers,

Regine