Capitalized keywords in file names, do they count?

I noticed this a while back, which probably was obvious: when a phrase is searched in Google... the term appearing in the domain name is bolded.. and also in the rest of the file name like directory name etc.

Google only does this if the word is not capitilized. Since then, I was under the impression that capitilized keywords in the file name do not contribute to the rankings of the page in the serps and are ignored.

Today I did a few "allinurl:" searches and my pages with capitilized keywords in the file names appeared near the top. So, from this I would assume that even the capitilized keywords contribute... even if G decides not to bold them in the reults.

Previously I made a vow never to create a file again with capitilized keywords in the file name of that page. Seems it doesn't matter at all. Any comments?

 

my god, i hope not. That wouldn't make sense anyway, or google would be encouraging people not to capitalize their sentences that begin with KWs...

 

It is my understanding that Google searches are "not" case sensitive. Since this would mean that the same results are returned for both versions I can't see where it could be of help.

 

I was talking specificly about URLs... like file names e.g. /Arabic-alphabet.shtml, as apposed to /arabic-alphabet.shtml

In the first case, I was under the impression that Google did not give the page "keyword-in-url credit" for the term arabic, as I was not seeing it bolded when doing normal searches.

The whole post only refers to URL keywords and not to stuff in the main body of the document, of course.

 

Recently I did a search and got the same URL listed twice, the only difference was the 2nd file name was /Australia.htm, where the first was /australia.htm I will try and find the search term.

However, whilst looking I found this:
directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Europe/ United_Kingdom/Travel_and_Tourism/Travel_Services/Travel_Agents/

They use caps..

 

So, that pretty much clears it. There is nothing wrong with using caps in URLs... just because Google does not bold the terms when the pages appear in the serps doesn't mean they are being ignored. They do count.

Personally I would use lower-case though.

 

wow that is news to me.. i thought they were viewed the same.

 

I've always just used lower case. Only recently have I switched from using underscores to separate keywords in file names to using hyphens.

 

I used to use upper case as well as lower case in my file names, but now I only use lower case file names. I don't think it affectes SERPs BUT your listing does stand out a bit more if you URL contains keywords that the user has searched for ..... and they are only made bold if they are in lower case. So, I did see some benefit in moving to lower case filenames and I did.

I am also using hyphens instead of underscores, after I read about a study that hyphens are considered better than underscores. (I think it was done by compar .... not sure though)

 

The only thing I've ever heard of regarding upper case/lower case is the operating system your site is hosted on. If it's windows; you can get away with a mix of upper/Lower case in your filenames; but unix/linux is case sensitive: so if you use domainname.com/FileName.htm; and your user searches for domainname.com/filename.htm the file will come up as not found; so going with lower case is usually the best way to go.