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  4. Capitals in url creates duplicate content?

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Capitals in url creates duplicate content?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • CarlS
    CarlS last edited by Oct 18, 2011, 2:02 AM

    Hey Guys,

    I had a quick look around however I couldn't find a specific answer to this.

    Currently, the SEOmoz tools come back and show a heap of duplicate content on my site. And there's a fair bit of it.

    However, a heap of those errors are relating to random capitals in the urls.

    for example.

    "www.website.com.au/Home/information/Stuff" is being treated as duplicate content of "www.website.com.au/home/information/stuff" (Note the difference in capitals).

    Anyone have any recommendations as to how to fix this server side(keeping in mind it's not practical or possible to fix all of these links) or to tell Google to ignore the capitalisation?

    Any help is greatly appreciated.

    LM.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • dimitreliasb
      dimitreliasb Subscriber @AlanMosley last edited by Jul 24, 2015, 10:50 AM Jul 24, 2015, 10:50 AM

      The IIS url-rewrite addon works great!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AlanMosley
        AlanMosley @nans last edited by May 9, 2013, 11:37 AM May 9, 2013, 11:37 AM

        From my memory Google does treat urls as case sensitive.

        Best to keep al urls as lower case.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • nans
          nans @AlanMosley last edited by May 9, 2013, 11:26 AM May 9, 2013, 11:26 AM

          Thanks for your reply Alan!

          Bing is irrelevant in Belgium 🙂 Maybe marketshare of 0,00005 or so 🙂

          When I look at the SEOMoz crawling reports I panic, but when I look at GWT, I'm happy... The difference is huge.

          So, no sure I will keep on using these reports..

          AlanMosley 1 Reply Last reply May 9, 2013, 11:37 AM Reply Quote 0
          • AlanMosley
            AlanMosley @nans last edited by May 9, 2013, 10:28 AM May 9, 2013, 10:28 AM

            I don't know that Google does ignore it. anyhow Bing does not http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-multiple-canonical-formats

            nans 1 Reply Last reply May 9, 2013, 11:26 AM Reply Quote 0
            • nans
              nans last edited by May 9, 2013, 8:22 AM May 9, 2013, 8:22 AM

              If Google ignores the mixed usage of capitals in URL's, then why is the SEOMoz reporting it? If it is irrelevant, why not leaving it out?? It takes quite some work to filter out the irrelevant stuff!

              AlanMosley 1 Reply Last reply May 9, 2013, 10:28 AM Reply Quote 0
              • CarlS
                CarlS @semshah143 last edited by Feb 20, 2012, 10:46 PM Feb 20, 2012, 10:46 PM

                Thanks Semil - The same duplicates are not showing in Google Webmaster Tools, for instance SEOMoz is showing 639 duplicate page content and 646 duplicate page titles. Webmaster tools is 88 and 37 respectively.

                Looking into the numbers in SEOmoz again (and they've risen since the original post) there's a huge number which fall under the capitalisation discussed but also some which seem to register as HTTPS and HTTP.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CarlS
                  CarlS @AlanMosley last edited by Feb 20, 2012, 10:42 PM Feb 20, 2012, 10:42 PM

                  Thanks Alan - I'll get on this...

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • AlanMosley
                    AlanMosley last edited by Oct 18, 2011, 3:34 AM Oct 18, 2011, 3:34 AM

                    Yes its seen as too different urls

                    http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-multiple-canonical-formats

                    If you are uisng a windows server (IIS), you can fix this easy by using the IIS url-rewrite addon. it had a rewite as lowercase preset

                    CarlS dimitreliasb 2 Replies Last reply Jul 24, 2015, 10:50 AM Reply Quote 1
                    • IanTheScot
                      IanTheScot last edited by Oct 18, 2011, 2:31 AM Oct 18, 2011, 2:31 AM

                      Google does count this as duplicate content. Semil is right. You want to have someone do url rewrites on the server side to 301 these to lowercase.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • semshah143
                        semshah143 last edited by Oct 18, 2011, 2:07 AM Oct 18, 2011, 2:07 AM

                        Hi LucasM,

                        Yes its possible by server side that you cant open a url with capital letters if you are using small letters.

                        But I dont think google will talke capitalisation in consideration.

                        Is it showing you in Google webmaster tool in duplicate titles and duplicate descriptions ?

                        If its showing then ask your coder to play with .htaccess to stop opening a url with different small - capital letter combination.

                        Thanks,

                        CarlS 1 Reply Last reply Feb 20, 2012, 10:46 PM Reply Quote 1
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