Is it best to use Hebrew / Arabic / Chinese or Latin characters in the URL? Here is an example of a URL with Hebrew and English mixed in as shown in a Google results page. It is nice that the URL keyword is bolded just like in English.
The only problem is that when you click on the link the URL in the address bar is OK for the English part Hebrew part is not something you are going to remember by heart.
In addition, if you click on the “Highlight all” button in the Firefox browser, the Hebrew in the SERPs gets split up as you can see below. This is probably because the URL is a mixture of right to left & left to right languages.
If you want people to memorize the specific URL of the page, Latin characters is the best way to go. If the specific URL is not important you can mix the languages as shown above. The home page part of the URL will still be readable.
Using URLs in Google Ads works, as you can see below. However the same problem exists with the resultant URL in the address bar.
Other options include transliterating the word–write how the word sounds in its native language using Latin letters. However the word will not bold up in the SERPs or ads because people don’t use this method to search. This is because they would get much poorer results (if at all) from the search engines.
In most cases I recommend using the local language or in the URL or at least the trailing end of it. This gives the person more of an idea what is on the page and results in bolded words in the SERPs. If branding the particular page is important then English or a transliteration should be considered.
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