Uppercases vs lowercases in URL

[Dakoom]

For example, here you use even the uppercases in URLs:

https://www.webmastersun.com/threads/11460-Hi-there!

What's the difference, if is there any, in term of SEO? Is it just a visual thing or does this affect also the SERPs?

 

[hoangvu]

Interesting question and I have the same question with you to someone else

For me it doesn't have the difference between Uppercases and lowercases in URL for SEO

Even, if it has any affections on this then very small because title and meta description are more important that URL in SEO and Uppercases or lowercases are only secondary matters.

 

[RDO Servers]

uppercase or lowercase does not make a difference, as long as it is one or the other.

You want to make sure you have redirect rules in place to redirect one to the other. Otherwise, google will see:

domain.com/MyPage.html
domain.com/mypage.html
domain.com/MYPAGE.html
domain.com/MyPaGe.html

as 4 separate websites.

 

[Miguelito203]

As far as I can tell, it doesn't really matter. You just need to be consistent, so things don't get screwy. I personally just have this thing where I like to see everything in lowercase letters.

Joey

 

[parth]

lowercase and uppercase both do not make any difference for URLs

 

[Alex the Lion]

Of the 200+ ranking factors Google uses, I've never heard of anyone cracking the ranking mystery by capitalizing a letter in their URL. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it.

 

[UVM]

Just remember that having www. or not having www. makes a huge difference stick with one based on how your htaccess file is setup

 

[Ron Killian]

I've never heard it making a difference either.

But one big thing, you need to stick with one thing, other wise you can cause yourself all kinds of headaches. I always do everything in lower case and I am consistent. Some times it will make a different (besides SEO) and you'll have issues and you don't know why. Just a thought.

 

[newsdeals]

Uppercases or lowercases in the URL are the same

 

[ulterios]

There is no difference as far as SEO. Sometimes some software/platforms are set up to do it one way or the other out of visual easy for people looking at the URL. As far as SEO, upper case or lower case, it makes no difference.

 

[SEOPub]

As far as I can tell, it doesn't really matter. You just need to be consistent, so things don't get screwy. I personally just have this thing where I like to see everything in lowercase letters.

Joey

lowercase and uppercase both do not make any difference for URLs

Uppercases or lowercases in the URL are the same

There is no difference as far as SEO. Sometimes some software/platforms are set up to do it one way or the other out of visual easy for people looking at the URL. As far as SEO, upper case or lower case, it makes no difference.

These answers are misinformed and incorrect. RDO Servers is the only one that provided the correct answer.

uppercase or lowercase does not make a difference, as long as it is one or the other.

You want to make sure you have redirect rules in place to redirect one to the other. Otherwise, google will see:

domain.com/MyPage.html
domain.com/mypage.html
domain.com/MYPAGE.html
domain.com/MyPaGe.html

as 4 separate websites.

It depends on how the server is setup. Windows based servers are case insensitive, and will adjust to the lower case. For example, if you type domain.com/About in your browser, you will end up on domain.com/about.

Linux servers, however, are case sensitive unless proper redirect rules are given to the server. So as RDO pointed out above, if the redirect rules are not in place, all 4 of those URLs are different and distinct URLs. If you pointed a link to domain.com/MyPage.html it would provide zero benefit to domain.com/mypage.html. They are entirely different URLs.

 

[ulterios]

ulterios

What is it that you are saying is incorrect? If they are wrong I'd like to know exactly what part so that the correct information is given out in the future.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Did you not read my response? Anything saying that uppercase and lowercase do not matter and to just disregard them is wrong. They do matter if the server is not setup with proper redirects and instructions.

domain.com/Mypage.html

is a different, and unique URL from

domain.com/MyPage.html

The incorrect version will return 404 errors. Any links pointing to the incorrect URL will not provide any benefit.

 

[ulterios]

ulterios

Yes I did. I wanted to know exactly what you are saying I am wrong about.

Did you read the OP's question to begin with? It doesn't look like it.

He was asking if there was an SEO benefit from using upper or lower case letters in the URL, not the setup of a server/system/platform/software or anything else.

He was only asking if there was an SEO benefit of using one or the other as far as upper or lower case letters.

I said there wasn't and you said I was incorrect. So, you are saying one or the other (upper case or lower case) has an SEO advantage.

So, since I am wrong according to you, then which one has an SEO benefit, upper or lower case letters?

 

[elcidofaguy]

This is for sure another reason to use the canonical tag which ensures only one version of your web url/page is credited with regards to consolidating link juice where different versions of a given page URL may pickup. Consolidating link juice is specific to SEO.

Not only can the URL differ with case sensitivity but also the same page could be accessed with postid, file extension as well as prefix with www and without... Potentially that's a lot of variations ;-)

For those who are not aware of the canonical tag - its really easy with adding within the <head> tags of your html as follows:

<link href="http://www.mywebsite.com/preferred-page-name/" rel="canonical" />

With redirecting to a specific format - make sure that if you use URL get parameters that it is not case sensitive otherwise you will need to exclude that from the conversion... To auto-convert a URL to specific format then there are various choices out there from plugins or via htaccess or httpd.conf. There are loads of examples online for that...

Personally my preference is for lowercase and looking online its very obvious that upper case URLs are very rare... The exception it seems are URL shortners which are case sensitive and have a mix of upper and lowercase letters which must be correct in most cases in order to access it correctly... I'm struggling to recollect a website which uses uppercase URLs - I can't think of any....