jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Google continues to say that Google searches are “always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ].” But since February 2008, we have been reporting cases where Google is case sensitive in terms of the search results they return. In fact, we reported it in February 2008, May 2008 and October 2008. So I am not surprised to see more threads about this topic spring up now at Search Engine Watch Forums.

In this example, the query is [seo services] in different cases. The three cases that return slightly different results include seo services, SEO Services and SEO services. As I ‘tab’ between the results, I see rank shifts and results that are missing on one, but on another.

For example, [SEO Services] shows webuildpages.com in the 10th position, while seo services doesn’t show webuildpages.com in that position, but rather, seomoz.org. There are several examples in this single search query of differences. I have posted screen captures of these results at Flickr. The screen shots are from searches I took within seconds of each other for these queries.

Does case matter in search or is something else in play here?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

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