undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • SEO Q&A

      Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Capitals in url creates duplicate content?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Capitals in url creates duplicate content?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
6
11
3.1k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • 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
      • topic:timeago_earlier,2 years
      • 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
              • topic:timeago_earlier,about a year
              • 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
                  • topic:timeago_earlier,4 months
                  • 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
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        Browse Questions

                        Explore more categories

                        • Moz Tools

                          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                        • SEO Tactics

                          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                        • Community

                          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                        • Digital Marketing

                          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                        • Research & Trends

                          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                        • Support

                          Connect on product support and feature requests.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • EdenPrez

                          Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?

                          Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 22, 2020, 2:21 AM | EdenPrez
                          0
                        • McTaggart

                          Underscores, capitals, non ASCII characters in image URLs - does it matter?

                          I see this strangely formatted image URLs on websites time and again - is this an issue - I imagine it isn't best practice but does it make any difference to SEO? Thanks in advance, Luke

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 26, 2017, 5:53 PM | McTaggart
                          0
                        • marcandre

                          Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?

                          Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 5, 2016, 3:32 PM | marcandre
                          1
                        • EndeR-

                          No-index pages with duplicate content?

                          Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 30, 2014, 4:18 PM | EndeR-
                          0
                        • khi5

                          Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?

                          I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 24, 2014, 10:05 PM | khi5
                          0
                        • gregelwell

                          Could you use a robots.txt file to disalow a duplicate content page from being crawled?

                          A website has duplicate content pages to make it easier for users to find the information from a couple spots in the site navigation. Site owner would like to keep it this way without hurting SEO. I've thought of using the robots.txt file to disallow search engines from crawling one of the pages. Would you think this is a workable/acceptable solution?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 4, 2012, 9:15 PM | gregelwell
                          0
                        • YNWA

                          Duplicate Content on Press Release?

                          Hi, We recently held a charity night in store. And had a few local celebs turn up etc... We created a press release to send out to various media outlets, within the press release were hyperlinks to our site and links on certain keywords to specific brands on our site. My question is, should we be sending a different press release to each outlet to stop the duplicate content thing, or is sending the same release out to everyone ok? We will be sending approx 20 of these out, some going online and some not. So far had one local paper website, a massive football website and a local magazine site. All pretty much same content and a few pics. Any help, hints or tips on how to go about this if I am going to be sending out to a load of other sites/blogs? Cheers

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 14, 2012, 9:09 AM | YNWA
                          0
                        • Gestisoft-Qc

                          Can PDF be seen as duplicate content? If so, how to prevent it?

                          I see no reason why PDF couldn't be considered duplicate content but I haven't seen any threads about it. We publish loads of product documentation provided by manufacturers as well as White Papers and Case Studies. These give our customers and prospects a better idea off our solutions and help them along their buying process. However, I'm not sure if it would be better to make them non-indexable to prevent duplicate content issues. Clearly we would prefer a solutions where we benefit from to keywords in the documents. Any one has insight on how to deal with PDF provided by third parties? Thanks in advance.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 10, 2015, 2:38 AM | Gestisoft-Qc
                          1

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.