Search Engine Panel

There have been a few reports from the search community that Google is showing signs of being case-sensitive. I’ve ran a dozen or so test searches myself with varying uppercase and lowercase letters, but there hasn’t been any changes in the search results. The total number of search results found differed by less than 10%, but this isn’t out of the ordinary.

So what does this mean if case-sensitivity becomes more prevalent?

For the average searcher, you’ll be able to (in theory) get more relevant results by using uppercase letters where appropriate. If you’re looking up the name of a particular brand of product or service, then you might find it useful to apply some capital letters. This will especially come in handy if your query involves common words.

For example, a search for "band aid" might give you advice on starting a band, while "Band Aid" will list product information for your boo-boos.

For the average search engine optimizer, this means… well I guess it depends if you’re of the "half full" or "half empty" variety. Obviously if you’re optimizing certain names, you might want to include some properly-cased keyphrases where appropriate. Although this may seem like more work, you could also see it as an opportunity to better match up with the right searchers.

Now don’t run off to Dreamweaver just yet, because there hasn’t been a widespread recognition of case-sensitive search results. This could just be a minor test update by Google on a few rogue datacenters. As always, we’ll let you know if this becomes a major issue.

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