Upper and lower case spelling = dupe content?
-
Hi All,
I've looking at my Crawl Diagnostics Summary and working on getting my site errors down as low as possible.
One thing I'm noticing is that in the "Other URLs" column I'm seeing a lot of 1s. When I click on the number, it is showing me the exact URL with an upper case category title.
For example, it appears like it's telling me that these two URLs are considered duplicate content:
Is that right? Does google care about upper and lower case spelling?
-
Thanks guys! This a huge help. I'll get it taken care of.
-
URLs are case sensitive after the TLD, so these would appear to Google to be duplicate content. Theoretically, those could be two different pages. Ideally, you could 301 redirect all of one to the other. So if you're using lower case /category across your site, you would want to 301 all the /Category URLs to /category.
Some sites correct for capitalization in URLs, and some don't. Do you have internal links using both forms of "category"? If so, you should correct those to one form, as 301's don't pass all your link juice, so you'd create a bit of a leak.
-
Hi Shawn
URLs are case sensitive; so in the example in your question, yes you have duplicate pages there.
As Category is spelt with both an Upper case and a lower case C you will have two identical pages, which is not good for either Search or User Experience.
Some confirmation for you that it's an absolute must to stick with lower case URLs can be found under Point 10 of "11 Best Practices for URLs" which is a blog post here on SEOmoz from a long time ago by Rand Fishkin which is still extremely valid today.
So it's highly recommended that you 301 Redirect any URLs with Upper case letters in to the corresponding URL that's completely lower case.
Regards
Simon
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
I have an issue with hubspot's blog platform and duplicate content.
It is redirecting all https to http and I am unable to change it, resulting in a lot of duplicate content. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, did you find a solution? Or does anyone have any suggestions?
Moz Pro | | KurtzGro0 -
Best Keyword Strategy for Lower-Authority-Ranked Domain
Hi, What should a lower-authority-ranked blog (DA - 21) who is trying to increase general traffic focus on above all when selecting keywords: difficulty, monthly volume, opportunity, or priority? I know that all are important factors to consider, but I fear that without an already consistent following our new content will just get hidden behind more established domains if we select too difficult of keywords. I'd love to hear from someone who's built up a blog audience as to what strategy they used here. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | ascott7770 -
Duplicate Site Content found in Moz; Have a URL Parameter set in Google Webmaster Tools
Hey, So on our site we have a Buyer's Guide that we made. Essentially it is a pop-up with a series of questions that then recommends a product. The parameter ?openguide=true can be used on any url on our site to pull this buyer's guide up. Somehow the Moz Site Crawl reported each one of our pages as duplicate content as it added this string (?openguide=true) to each page. We already have a URL Parameter set in Google Webmaster Tools as openguide ; however, I am now worried that google might be seeing this duplicate content as well. I have checked all of the pages with duplicate title tags in the Webmaster Tools to see if that could give me an answer as to whether it is detecting duplicate content. I did not find any duplicate title tag pages that were because of the openguide parameter. I am just wondering if anyone knows:
Moz Pro | | MitchellChapman
1. a way to check if google is seeing it as duplicate content
2. make sure that the parameter is set correctly in webmaster tools
3. or a better way to prevent the crawler from thinking this is duplicate content Any help is appreciated! Thanks, Mitchell Chapman
www.kontrolfreek.com0 -
Videos on duplicate content editing
Hi, I am looking for good videos with visual examples on how to edit duplicate content issues. I am editing a law firms website, and for the most part the duplicate issues seem to show up in tag URL's on the blog. I feel like I have maybe half of the picture figured out, but I am not sure how or where to make changes. I have gone through the crawl diagnostic issues and a few articles, but I know I am a visual learner. Therefore a video might be helpful. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to get started? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | DigitalEnvy0 -
Why do I see a duplicate content errors when rel="canonical" tag is present
I was reviewing my first Moz crawler report and noticed the crawler returned a bunch of duplicate page content errors. The recommendations to correct this issue are to either put a 301 redirect on the duplicate URL or use the rel="canonical" tag so Google knows which URL I view as the most important and the one that should appear in the search results. However, after poking around the source code I noticed all of the pages that are returning duplicate content in the eyes of the Moz crawler already have the rel="canonical" tag. Does the Moz crawler simply not catch whether that tag is being used? If I have that tag in place, is there anything else I need to do in order to get that error to stop showing up in the Moz crawler report?
Moz Pro | | shinolamoz0 -
Duplicate content
Hi Since adding blog to a site semoz is reporting increased duplicate content warning on seomoz crawl error tool such as: /blog/category/easter being a duplicate of blog/2013/03 Does this type of dupe content matter ? If so how do you stop this ? Also pages and pages of dupe content reported from internal/site search results, such as: /catalogsearch/result/index/?q=mens+fashion being a duplicate of /catalogsearch/result/?q=mens+fashion Does this matter need to be fixed or since internal site search not an issue and can just ignore, if it is an issue what do you need do to fix this type of dupe content ? Cheers Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SEOmoz giving duplicate content that does not exist.
My problem is similar, and SEOmoz add campaign is giving me several pag. Duplicate, and he's giving me links pag. That do not exist. Look below. My site has 115 pages and the extent SEMOZ gave me 250. Duplicate Page Content ... pages / Alexandra / Clarisse / Clarisse.html
Moz Pro | | Slash-RJ
... pages / Alexandra / Clarisse / Clarisse / Clarisse.html
... pages / Alexandra / Clarisse / Clarisse / Clarisse / Clarisse.html
.... pages / Alexandra / Clarisse / Clarisse / Clarisse / Lizie / Lizie.html When the verade this link does not exist, there is only. ... pages / Alexandra / Alexandra.html
... pages / Clarisse / Clarissehtml
And so on. How to Solve?0 -
My crawl diagnostic is showing 2 duplicate content and titles.
First of all Hi - My name is Jason and I've just joined - How you all doing? My 1st question then: When I view where these errors are occurring it says www mydomain co uk and www mydomain co uk/index.html Isn't this the same page? I have looked into my root folder and only index.html exists.
Moz Pro | | JasonHegarty0