After a little digging up, I found enough evidence to believe that…
1. Google searches are never case sensitive - as we already knew.
2. Google PR is case sensitive - as I suspected, in step with web standards, URLs are case sensitive. Google and alternative search engines follow this standard.
There have been a few reported cases of the identical pages being in Google’s index two or more times because they were linked to with different cases (ie.: /ABC.htm, /abc.htm, /Abc.htm).
The foundation of the matter, as you may have guessed, is Microsoft’s ignorance towards net standards. Microsoft servers are set up in opposition to the net commonplace on case sensitivity in which /ABC.htm is different from /abc.htm. IIS ignores the case completely different and offers control of the request to wrong file.
My web site is on a Windows Server, how bad is the problem?
Well, it is not visiting ‘bring down the net’ as some lammers might counsel, but there are problems that need to be addressed. IIS’s choice to ignore case sensitivity means that search engines (that are case sensitive) will index the exact same content for different URLs. It’s terribly unlikely a website would be penalized for this, however it can definitelly impair your website’s ability to rank well. It makes it specially troublesome for the duplicated page to rank well for the terms it targets.
This can be only a difficulty if there are two or additional links point to the same URL in a totally different case. You’ll be able to avoid this drawback by invariably using lowercase in your link tags, but you cannot stop alternative websites linking into the same URL in capital letters - so one thing must be done on the server in order to deal with this issue.
How can I fix it?
I will almost picture you “URL Rewrite Junkies” jumping up and down with the solution on your hands, but as we all understand, URL Rewrite is a feature solely on the market to correct net-servers, nothing you’d expect to see in IIS.
A. Server Component (IIS various to URL Rewrite)
Not free, not straightforward to setup and can only be put in on your own server. The sole upside is that this may 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 will be put in on any server, not just your own. The only draw back is that you’ll only enforce case sensitiveness for requests that are handled by this script. This suggests static HTML pages, directories, images, etc would still be exposed to this issue. HOWEVER, if with a very little help from a custom 404 error page you can do simply concerning anything. But that is an entire alternative topic…
Here’s how you’d enforce case sensitiveness using VB Script:
Code: If Request.ServerVariables(”URL”)LCase(Request.ServerVariables(”URL”)) Then
Response.Status = 301 ‘Permanently Redirected
Response.AddHeader “Location”, LCase(Request.ServerVariables(”URL”))
Response.End()
End If
%> It does not would like to be the very 1st thing on each page, however so as to perform a proper permanent redirect, this should be execute before any content is written to the response’s output stream, ie.: Before any HTML or Response.Write.
Hope this helps a few up-and-coming back SEO consultants (and wanna-bes)
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