Uppercase to lowercase filename change

Result: Google lists twice - Worried!

[TheWhippinpost]

During site facelift and general SEO exercise, I decided to also clean up filenames - Where there were uppercase letters, eg... Widget-Wodget.htm, I changed to a more user-friendly, widget-wodget.htm

Today, I was pleased, and horrified to discover that my top keyphrase is ranking at #2 on Google...TWICE! One for the Uppercase named file, the other for the lowercased name.

I haven't managed to get round to changing all the internal links yet but I'm worried that eventually Google might penalise me for dupe content, or, someone reporting a spam infringement.

Should I be concerned or just let it wash itself out?

[ciml]

I don't know if it's just a temporary problem, but Google's duplicate merging doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

Either that, or there are strange artifacts from the www-fi datacentre returning Esmerelda and pre-Esmerelda cache depending on whether the funny codes are in the URL. (sorry, I don't know the proper term for the "funny codes")

If no URL links to Widget-Wodget.htm, then I think it'll wash itself out.

[pageoneresults]

ciml, could this also relate to server configuration where upper and lower case file naming is treated differently? I've not had this experience since I always use lowercase when coding and naming files.

<added>Thinking about this, even if the server were configured to recognize upper and lower case file naming, if the pages were renamed, a 404 would of course be in effect. As ciml points out, give it some time to migrate and clean itself up.

[ciml]

Yes pageoneresults, this could be caused by anything that causes the two URLs to return different content. It can also happen if the content changes between the time (or days) that Google visits the two URLs; this is often the case where there's a date stamp on the page.

[TheWhippinpost]

Thanks guys, I'll keep an eye on the situ and pray the guy above me in #1 position doesn't get any funny ideas.

[g1smd]

>> I haven't managed to get round to changing all the internal links yet <<

Make sure that you get rid of, or redirect from, all of the mixed case filename pages, and make sure that all site internal navigation only refers to the lowercase only filenames as soon as possible, otherwise you might have a duplicate content / potential spam issue on your hands.