Capitalized letter(s) in pages' URI?

[manca]

Hey guys, I am wondering what is happening with the mod_rewritten pages that are actually virtual (domain.com/page/) but looking like folder. Are google smart enough to detect domain.com/Page/ and threat it the same as the domain.com/page/? I mean, this is not going to trigger dup. content filter at google, right? Same content page, just different URI, with capitalized first or any other letter.

What do you think about this 'potential' issue?

[tedster]

Are google smart enough...

It would not be smart of them at all -- the web standard set way back when by the W3C is that the URI is case sensitive beyond the domain. Yes, changing the case like that can lead to duplicate uri problems. I've seen it with clients and helped them fix it.

[manca]

Thanks for the answer Tedster. So i should focus on one type of uris then, huh?

[jcmoon]

Absolutely. Most people will tell you to just make everything lowercase and leave it at that, but no matter what you do, keep it consistent - both internally (all the content in your site) and externally (all the people that link to your site). As it's much harder to control the latter part, leaving things lowercase by default again makes it simpler to keep things consistent.

[manca]

Alright, thanks a lot for heads up! I really appreciate it.

[g1smd]

Capitalistation issues are one of the main causes of duplicate content problems when using IIS.

Apache is immune to it.

[Cluttermeleon]

On a similar subject...

If I changed this URL:

www.mysite.com/widget/?Partner=ABC

to

www.mysite.com/widget/?partner=ABC

Would it be treated as a completely new URL even though the capitalisation of one letter is the only change? (I think there would be no dupe content issues because the partner parameter is dynamic)

[MLHmptn]

Yes it would because everything beyond the TLD is case-sensitive dynamic or not.

[Chris_H]

If you're using IIS then yes, make sure you don't mix and match your querystrings... we experienced massive duplicate content problems due to this, and it took considerable time and effort to resolve.

[g1smd]

If anything at all about the URL is different then it is a different URL.

Multiple URLs that return the same content are "duplicate content".