URLs - what case should be used for display URLs?

Title case? Lower case?

[JBrown]

Does anyone have any data on which is better to use?

Such as Lower case is better for conversion, but Title case is better for branding?

Personally, I prefer Title case for the copy, but Lower case for the display URL. However, that's more intuition than data and I wondered if anyone has tested this.

[netmeg]

I read something (and it was long enough ago that I don't remember where it was) that mixed case (title, I think you called it) display URLS tended to stand out better than all lower case.

Since then I've been experimenting with first www.WidgetSupplies.com and then just WidgetSupplies.com, and believe it or not, we did see an increase in CTR. So I've pretty much changed over to WidgetSupplies.com style display urls across the board.

[rocknbil]

AdWords just recently reviewed one of my campaigns, providing "AdName-Opt" for each ad in the campaign, with the "Opt" versions in pause pending my approval. This was one of the things they changed. I'm guessing it was a robot process and not a manual review.

In many cases, they made the display URL more keyword-relevant and not even the actual URL. For example, for www.widget-example.com/large-blue-widgets.html, the display url would be WidgetExample.com/LargeBlueWidgets.

They also applied this to ad text, their explanation was that it makes it more visible [sic]. So instead of proper English, They Capitalized Every Word In The Ad Text.

It's been running over a month and I've seen a decent increase in clickthroughs, generally 1% per keyword and some up to a 5% increase. So I'm beginning to think that casing is relevant.

[RhinoFish]

i've found that the effect of bolding, combined with title case, makes keywords in the display url more recognizable. dropping the www gives more room to let them be seen. in cases where there's no keywords in the domain and rest of the display url, the differences diminsh greatly. makes sense. if i'm searching for a "boat anchors: and the display url is BoatAnchors.com/Boat-Anchors.html and lots of bolding shows up, my eye gets drawn to it. If the rest of the ad is compelling, I'm clciking it to check it out.

Boat Anchors
Compare Boat Anchors from 14 Stores
Search by Price, Size and Type.
BoatAnchors.com/Boat-Anchors.html

Bold city.

[JBrown]

Thanks for the responses. I did find one blog that goes into some testing on capitlization and casing:
[blog.mindvalleylabs.com...]