[thelist] Entities and Search Engines

[Joshua Olson]

I have a client who has a brand name that they built a site around.  The
name appears multiple times on many pages in within paragraphs.  The client
would also like to have the trademark symbol appear after each instance of
the name.  For now, I'm using the following:

ByBrand™

My fear is that the placement of the ™ directly after the brand name
will cause search engines to not index the name properly and someone search
specifically for the name may have a lessened chance of finding the site?
Alternatively, search engines may be smart enough to consider some HTML
entities--such as the trademark symbol--as white space instead of actual
characters.

Any thoughts/resources on this?  Any idea on what I should recommend?

Much appreciated,

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Joshua Olson
Web Application Engineer
WAE Tech Inc.
http://www.waetech.com/service_areas/
706.210.0168