Should it be SEO UK, seo uk or SEO uk?

October 8th, 2008

Depending on how capitalisation is used in your search query you may see different results. Try the three ’seo uk’ variations above and see for yourself where our website ranks for each search term. Surprisingly the variation in capitalization can account for a shift in as much as 5 or 6 places in the results.

“Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.” - [ http://www.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=searchguides.html&ctx=basics&hl=en ]

It seems that this no longer holds true and that Google searches are indeed case sensitive, for the time being at least, but why? Is it simply a glitch in the algorithms? or a brave move by Google to allow more websites to benefit from better SERPs visibility based on capitalization variation?

Maybe the latter sounds a little too far-fetched, but why should Google not offer different results based on capitalization. It’s already happening with localized and personalized results? After all, who really wants to go back to the days where, for any query, a different handful of websites dominated the SERPs.

It would be really nice if Matt Cutts or someone of a similar standing in the SEO community could present Google’s take on this matter.

Entry Filed under: SEO Industry, SEO