Capitalisation affects ranking or not?

Its not case sensitive !!

 

search results are case sensitive, lower case is better for keywords

 

lol.
conflicting opinions here.

my opinion now....

it really doesnt matter IF a search engine is case sensitive or not if:

99% of people put in the query in lowercase, no quotes, and the search engines display all cases (lower, sentence, upper) in their results, and have a VERY LOW WEIGHT on the case.

And based on my seo experience since 1999, the above is true.

Therefore, since it is not prudent to make three versions of the same document for any reason, it is best to use both sentence case and lower case. Use sentence case in the title and meta description for conversion.

Use both versions in the body of the document.

The result is that you should, no matter how the filters change in the future, do well in the search results for both variants.

 

In my research for our site over the past few months, I have concluded that capitalization does matter. It seems that Google is now determining that 'free' and 'Free', for instance, are two different words.

 

the stealthy one,

across the board, you are probably correct. I used to cloak, and I used all three versions, and my reports with topdog (defunct), sitesubmit (defunct) and webpositionGold 1.xxx supported that.

However, since most people dont want to try to make three versions, and factoring in that most queries are in lower case based on my readings and experience, and based on the fact that, indeed, it does make only a SMALL difference in the search results (especially if you use sentence case in the title and description, but some lowercase in the document), that for most webmasters, it is not a problem.

But for all to read......even tho google suggests it doesnt matter (go read their documentation), it does matter a little bit, and is easily overcome.

dont make three versions if you want to listen to my advice.

 

I do not think capitalization affects rankings in the serp in any way.

 

kingofsanda,

hmm. did you run some queries? Assume you target one page with NO sentence cap. just lowercase. do that with 25 domains now, and 25 sentence capped. the document can only have the same small or sentence cap within it.

on an existing domain, from the same page, link to the 50 domains, no linktext, just images.

wait till google indexes the sites.

now do some queries.

25 unique phrases into two groups.

do searches with lowercase, some with sentence case.

what are the results?

What you should find is that there is a correlation, not 100% consistent, but statistically consistent, that shows you that altho the documentation says the search engines are not case sensitive, that for some reason, they seem to be skewed to such.

now, you can do some less controlled stuff yourself.

do some searches on google, note the position of every top 100 result. According to you, i think, there should be no change in the results whatsoever.

I find this to be false.

again, opinions really do vary alot on this topic. I have been doing seo since 1999, and it truly is a controversial one. i have seen experts on both sides, people i have known online for years.......

because of the way i optimize pages, it is inconsequential, and i outlined the advice before here.

 

i just found this article few days ago:
http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/googl...m-using-capital-letters-creates-new-keywords/

if that's for real, then it's time to do variations of our KWs using lowercase and Uppercase

 

http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics&hl=en#case

 

Automatic "and" queries

By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii.

 

I don't think it would be a factor in the top SERPs. Good grammar is probably a good thing though.

Notting

 

I think it would be a factor these days. Search "New York" and "new york" you will find different result.

 

Capitalisation doesn't matter... unless all your headline is capitalised... Google won't like that...

 

Here is the link to the WebPro new article mentioned that talks about this: Capital Idea: Google Looking at Letters

I've talked to people who say they've noticed that this has been going for 2-3 months, so I think it's about time that prominent people in the SEO industry begin blogging about it more.

This is a BIG deal. It means that keyword research tools either need to be revamped, or google needs to offer an explanation about what's going on. 2-3 months is a long time if this is merely a glitch.

 

Capitalization is ABSOLUTELY a Factor!

The number of search results is really not that important, unless you're competing for spot 100,000 of 140,000. However, if you want to land in the top five or the first page listing of search results for specific key terms, capitalization makes a huge difference.

The difference between the first page and the fifth is in the details, especially in this case. Capitalization does not matter with EVERY keyword, only specific "terms of art." In some cases, the results can be very different depending on the version of a word and how you've optimized for your specific keywords. Hope this helps clarify...

Best & Take Care!

 

It's funny that in spite of this, Google's official stance is still that capitalization doesn't matter. What interest would they have in not telling people that it is now a factor? Unless they were trying to slowly roll out this change in the algorithm. See how people respond to it....

 

I have personal, recent experience of this being an issue on a very very large corporate site. The CEO wondered why the site ranked #3 in Google for a very strong keyword but only appeared on the 7th page for an equally strong keyword. We discovered that the one keyword we were looking for was capitalized roughly 75% on the home page and the other was not capitalized at all.

When we did a search for the capitalized version of the keyword and discovered it was #3 in Google (for our site) we concluded that capitalization to Google IS different.

 

Nah it doesnot affect.

 

Ha, this seems like it could be a never-ending debate. But I think the question at this point, since there is irrefutable evidence, is whether this is a glitch or a change in the algo. And if it's a glitch, then why hasn't the glitch been taken care of after 3 months?

 

If you get listing with

"web development australia" on no. 4th... May be it changed on "Web Development Australia".... if some has used like this, and

For both the keywords you are having equal importance, but when user search with "web development australia" your website comes on first because you have used it, and for "Web Development Australia" your competitors website gets priority, cz it's looks like same as the query fired.

But generally no more difference found....