Case Sensitivity When Updating Page Names

[DXL]

If a page on a website is named Widgets.html, and is indexed in Google as Widgets.html, is it necessary to keep the file name case-sensitive when redesigning the site? If the file name was changed to either WIDGETS.html or widgets.html, will Yahoo and Google still consider it the same page?

[maximillianos]

If a search engine has indexed a page in a certain case, that is the case it will try to access your page with.

Your best bet is to configure your webserver to ignore case. Then you don't need to worry about it.

[Shaddows]

Your best bet is to configure your webserver to ignore case

Wouldnt the best case be to 301 or re-write everything to the lowercase version, otherwise you risk canonical issues?

[maximillianos]

Wouldnt the best case be to 301 or re-write everything to the lowercase version, otherwise you risk canonical issues?

We are saying essentially the same thing... The solution for configuring Apache (for example) to be case insensitive is to use 301-redirects... ;-)

However if you are on IIS, it is already case insensitive, so no work needs to be done.

[coopster]

... except that the resource is seen as two or more separate resources and index *votes* are divided amongst them ... at least, this is the current consensus. Explanation to follow.

will Yahoo and Google still consider it the same page?

No. The pages will be seen as separate pages, but containing duplicate content. The following resources could actually return the same content:

http://www.example.com/ 
http://www.example.com/index.htm  
[example.com...]   
[example.com...]  
For IIS, you can mix letter case and the resource list is expanded. All the uniform resource names above may point to the exact same content on a server. The search engines will note as such and properly index according to their definitions. Do you really want multiple resources delivering the exact same content? Today's argument is "absolutely not" and a quick search over the forums for "canonical url" or even "duplicate content" will turn up plenty of discussion. I just posted in another thread in regard to a similar question that may be of interest, particularly the links posted there: 
Homepage has split Pagerank [webmasterworld.com]

		
			

[DXL]

The site is hosted with [restricted configurability], as such, I don't think I can modify the Apache settings on my own end.

[edited by: phranque at 1:02 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2008]
[edit reason] hosting specifics [/edit]

[maximillianos]

DXL - You can also utilize what is called a ".htaccess" file to configure 301 redirects to fix case problems. So you don't need access to Apache config. Doing it in Apache is better for performance, but the same can be done in a simple ".htaccess" file that you just need to upload to your directory where the files reside.

[DXL]

I don't do much editing to .htaccess files.

Where's a good tutorial on redirects by editing the .htaccess file?

[phranque]

there are a few such threads in the apache web server forum library [webmasterworld.com].