diff --git a/internal/scan/dork.go b/internal/scan/dork.go
index 0be05cf..e9f361b 100644
--- a/internal/scan/dork.go
+++ b/internal/scan/dork.go
@@ -18,8 +18,8 @@ package scan
 import (
 	"bufio"
 	"context"
-	"fmt"
 	"net/http"
+	"net/url"
 	"strconv"
 	"sync"
 	"time"
@@ -44,11 +44,18 @@ type DorkResult struct {
 	Count int    `json:"count"` // The number of times this URL appeared in the dork's results
 }
 
+// dorkQuery percent-encodes the dork and host together. the google-search
+// client drops the term into the query string verbatim, so an unencoded '#'
+// or '&' (both common in the dork list) truncates or splits the query.
+func dorkQuery(dork, host string) string {
+	return url.QueryEscape(dork + " " + host)
+}
+
 // Dork performs Google dorking operations on the target URL.
 // It uses a predefined list of dorks to search for potentially sensitive information.
 //
 // Parameters:
-//   - url: The target URL to dork
+//   - targetURL: The target URL to dork
 //   - timeout: Maximum duration for each dork search
 //   - threads: Number of concurrent threads to use
 //   - logdir: Directory to store log files (empty string for no logging)
@@ -56,13 +63,13 @@ type DorkResult struct {
 // Returns:
 //   - []DorkResult: A slice of results from the dorking operation
 //   - error: Any error encountered during the dorking process
-func Dork(url string, timeout time.Duration, threads int, logdir string) ([]DorkResult, error) {
+func Dork(targetURL string, timeout time.Duration, threads int, logdir string) ([]DorkResult, error) {
 	output.ScanStart("URL dorking")
 
 	spin := output.NewSpinner("Running Google dorks")
 	spin.Start()
 
-	sanitizedURL := stripScheme(url)
+	sanitizedURL := stripScheme(targetURL)
 
 	if logdir != "" {
 		if err := logger.WriteHeader(sanitizedURL, logdir, "URL dorking"); err != nil {
@@ -98,7 +105,7 @@ func Dork(url string, timeout time.Duration, threads int, logdir string) ([]Dork
 
 	dorkResults := []DorkResult{}
 	pool.Each(dorks, threads, func(dork string) {
-		results, err := googlesearch.Search(context.TODO(), fmt.Sprintf("%s %s", dork, sanitizedURL))
+		results, err := googlesearch.Search(context.TODO(), dorkQuery(dork, sanitizedURL))
 		if err != nil {
 			log.Debugf("error searching for dork %s: %v", dork, err)
 			return
diff --git a/internal/scan/dork_test.go b/internal/scan/dork_test.go
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..764aa26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/internal/scan/dork_test.go
@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+/*
+·━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━·
+:                                                                               :
+:   █▀ █ █▀▀   ·   Blazing-fast pentesting suite                                :
+:   ▄█ █ █▀    ·   BSD 3-Clause License                                         :
+:                                                                               :
+:   (c) 2022-2026 vmfunc, xyzeva,                                               :
+:                 lunchcat alumni & contributors                                :
+:                                                                               :
+·━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━·
+*/
+
+package scan
+
+import (
+	"net/url"
+	"strings"
+	"testing"
+)
+
+// buildSearchURL mirrors how the google-search client turns a search term into
+// a request url: it trims spaces, swaps the rest for '+' and drops the term
+// into the query string verbatim without any encoding.
+func buildSearchURL(term string) string {
+	term = strings.Trim(term, " ")
+	term = strings.ReplaceAll(term, " ", "+")
+	return "https://www.google.com/search?q=" + term + "&hl=en"
+}
+
+func TestDorkQueryPreservesSpecialCharacters(t *testing.T) {
+	cases := []struct {
+		name string
+		dork string
+	}{
+		{"hash", `intext:"#mysql dump" filetype:sql`},
+		{"ampersand", `filetype:sql "a & b"`},
+		{"question", `inurl:index.php?id=`},
+		{"plain", `intitle:"index of" passwd`},
+	}
+
+	for _, tc := range cases {
+		t.Run(tc.name, func(t *testing.T) {
+			want := tc.dork + " example.com"
+
+			u, err := url.Parse(buildSearchURL(dorkQuery(tc.dork, "example.com")))
+			if err != nil {
+				t.Fatalf("parse encoded url: %v", err)
+			}
+			if got := u.Query().Get("q"); got != want {
+				t.Errorf("encoded query = %q, want %q", got, want)
+			}
+			// a fragment or a stray query param means the dork leaked out of q.
+			if u.Fragment != "" {
+				t.Errorf("encoded url has fragment %q, query truncated", u.Fragment)
+			}
+			if len(u.Query()) != 2 { // q and hl only
+				t.Errorf("encoded url has stray params: %v", u.Query())
+			}
+		})
+	}
+}
+
+// guards the regression directly: the old naive term drops everything after a
+// '#' into the fragment, so the search runs against a fragment of the dork.
+func TestDorkQueryFixesNaiveTruncation(t *testing.T) {
+	dork := `intext:"#mysql dump" filetype:sql`
+
+	naive, err := url.Parse(buildSearchURL(dork + " example.com"))
+	if err != nil {
+		t.Fatalf("parse naive url: %v", err)
+	}
+	if naive.Query().Get("q") == dork+" example.com" {
+		t.Fatal("expected the naive term to truncate, but it survived")
+	}
+
+	fixed, err := url.Parse(buildSearchURL(dorkQuery(dork, "example.com")))
+	if err != nil {
+		t.Fatalf("parse fixed url: %v", err)
+	}
+	if got, want := fixed.Query().Get("q"), dork+" example.com"; got != want {
+		t.Errorf("fixed query = %q, want %q", got, want)
+	}
+}