Dear All,

I would very much value your opinions and thoughts on a bit of a dilemma I am facing.

I work as an SEO for an agency and am looking after a client who has a large database driven informational site.

They use .ASP and URL's exist in the format of:

www.domainname.com/productfamily/producttype/product.asp

So far so good.

However, I noticed that in their Site Map they have URL's in a different format than that used in the main navigation of the site.

For example, a link on their Site Map could be:

www.domainname.com/PRODUCTFAMILY/producttype/product.asp

and a link to the same page from the main navigation of the site could be:

www.domainname.com/productfamily/producttype/product.asp

So, the site contains a mixture of different internal links to the same page - some in upper-case, some in lower-case and some using a mixture of the two.

Now, my problem is that Google has indexed a mixture of these pages - some with upper-case URLs, some with lower-case URLs.

I have suggested to my client that this is a serious problem because it could cause potential duplicate content issues in Google.

I have recommended that they give thought to implementing a "fix" on their Microsoft Internet server that makes sure all URLs are either in lower-case or upper-case throughout the site.

My colleagues at work disagree this is a serious problem.

My question is, do I go ahead and recommend the change or leave as is?

I look forward to your thoughts and perhaps reasons for going ahead and reasons for leaving the situations as is.

Kind regards,

Nick (UK)

Has Google indexed BOTH versions of these pages? If so, it is worth fixing. If not, fixing will take time to resolve in the index so if the ranking's are already reasonable why make changes now. If you get any duplicate content penalty, fix it then.

*reasons for leaving the situations as is.*

Can't think of one...

Any G response apart from filtering duplicates may depend on the perceived intent, if you're running AS it's an ASAP IMO.

Hi again,

I have noticed something odd on Google this morning - it seems to have picked up both URL's!

If I type into Google:

www.domainname.com/productfamily/producttype/product.asp

it will find and display the details but below this the following text is displayed:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

-if you click on this I was amazed to see the following:

www.domainname.com/productfamily/producttype/product.asp
description of company, etc, etc

www.domainname.com/PRODUCTFAMILY/producttype/product.asp
description of company, etc, etc


So, it appears that Google has recognised that two existing URL's exist on the site but link to the exact same page.

Can I assume from this that Google is ok with the situation and I don't need to worry anymore about upper/lower case issues and the like?