Website Quality Alert

Unknown character encoding

Problem:

The name of the character encoding defined for the web page is unknown.

Whenever we find an unknown encoding name, we try guess the correct value by applying heuristics of common misspellings and a list of common non-standard names. Often, this is not possible or would not be reliable. Our heuristics are based on the list of preferred character set names defined by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and on our own research.

Impact:

Browsers may have difficulties showing the text of the page correctly.

Although most modern browsers would also try automatically detect the correct encoding, they may not always succeed. Also, one should keep in mind that the web is more and more surfed using devices such as mobile phones, game consoles or TV sets, which may have less capable and error tolerant browsers.

Additionally, search engines may not recognize the text of your pages correctly, so that people interested in your site's topics may not find it.

Recommendation:

Always specify the encoding correctly, using the preferred encoding name.