Google PR is Case Sensitive
Once a little digging up, I found enough proof to believe that…
1. Google searches are never case sensitive – as we have a tendency to already knew.
2. Google PR is case sensitive – as I suspected, in line with internet standards, URLs are case sensitive. Google and alternative search engines follow this standard.
There have been some reported cases of the same pages being in Google’s index a pair of or more times because they were linked to with completely different cases (ie.: /ABC.htm, /abc.htm, /Abc.htm).
The root of the problem, as you will have guessed, is Microsoft’s ignorance towards net standards. Microsoft servers are founded in opposition to the web normal on case sensitivity in which /ABC.htm is completely different from /abc.htm. IIS ignores the case completely different and gives management of the request to wrong file.
My site is on a Windows Server, how bad is the matter?
Well, it’s not visiting ‘bring down the web’ as some lammers may suggest, but there are issues that need to be addressed. IIS’s selection to ignore case sensitivity suggests that search engines (that are case sensitive) will index the precise same content for various URLs. It’s terribly unlikely a website would be penalized for this, but it can definitelly impair your website’s ability to rank well. It makes it specially tough for the duplicated page to rank well for the terms it targets.
This is only a difficulty if there are 2 or additional links purpose to the identical URL in a very different case. You’ll be able to avoid this drawback by continuously using lowercase in your link tags, but you can’t stop different websites linking into the identical URL in capital letters – thus one thing should be done on the server so as to accommodate this issue.
How will I fix it?
I will almost picture you “URL Rewrite Junkies” jumping up and down with the answer on your hands, however as we tend to all know, URL Rewrite is a feature solely accessible to proper net-servers, nothing you’d expect to determine in IIS.
A. Server Component (IIS different to URL Rewrite)
Not free, not simple to setup and will only be installed on your own server. The only upside is that this would work for all files/scripts/directories on the website.
B. Script (and a very little permanent redirection)
It’s free, it’s easy to setup and can be put in on any server, not just your own. The only downside is that you’ll be able to solely enforce case sensitiveness for requests that are handled by this script. This implies static HTML pages, directories, images, etc would still be exposed to this issue. HOWEVER, if with a little help from a custom 404 error page you’ll do simply concerning anything. But that’s a full different topic…
Here’s how you’d enforce case sensitiveness using VB Script:
Code: If Request.ServerVariables(“URL”)LCase(Request.ServerVariables(“URL”)) Then
Response.Standing = 301 ‘Permanently Redirected
Response.AddHeader “Location”, LCase(Request.ServerVariables(“URL”))
Response.Finish()
Finish If
%> It doesn’t need to be the terribly 1st issue on every page, but so as to perform a proper permanent redirect, this must be execute before any content is written to the response’s output stream, ie.: Before any HTML or Response.Write.
Hope this helps some up-and-returning SEO experts (and wanna-bes)
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One Response to “Google PR is Case Sensitive”
Url Redirection Service says:
February 6, 2010 at 7:22 pm
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