Why do some websites have ?utf8=✓ in their title?

UrlUnicodeUtf 8Hyperlink

Url Problem Overview

I've noticed that a lot of websites, when searching or just browsing, will add a get variable called utf and set it equal to a check mark (?utf8=✓).

Two examples are:

  • Dotabuff has its search URL include it. Example: dotabuff.com/search?utf8=✓&q=PPD

  • Bibme also has its search URL include it. Example: bibme.org/mla/website-citation/search?utf8=✓&q=someurl.com

Url Solutions

Solution 1 - Url

URIs contain utf8=✓ to force the client to send UTF-8.
It works because the key-value-pair (which is ignored by the target) contains a unicode-only character.

From Is the use of “utf8=✓” preferable to “utf8=true”?:

>By default, older versions of IE (<=8) will submit form data in Latin-1 encoding if possible. By including a character that can't be expressed in Latin-1, IE is forced to use UTF-8 encoding for its form submissions, which simplifies various backend processes, for example database persistence. > > If the parameter was instead utf8=true then this wouldn't trigger the UTF-8 encoding in these browsers.

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Content TypeOriginal AuthorOriginal Content on Stackoverflow
QuestionJonView Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - UrlDeduplicatorView Answer on Stackoverflow