Google is being selective about urls

[google junky]

Hopefully, we all agree that when a search is done that anything in bold is considered a good thing.
As long as I have been in the Google forums here I haven't seen this brought up yet.

I added a links script to a clients site and have been watching it closely to see how Google would react to the categories.
As in .. /Regional_Indiana/ or even /Regional/Indiana/
I came across a startling discovery....for me at least.

I have seen many people asking if Google would take any action to slow or stop link farms. Maybe this is related in some way. It seems that Google may have taken a step against CGI links scripts that use category names in the url in capitals. Doesn't matter if the first letter is the only one that is capitalized either.

Anything in an url that is in caps will not be in bold in a search. Anything in lowercase is bolded.
Example: Regional Indiana

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

[flood6]

I haven't seen anything like that pointed out before. Nice catch.

Even when you capitalize the word and search for it like Regional Indiana it still won't bold the capitalized words in the URLs.

It has been pointed out before that just because it is bolded doesn't mean Google counts it as a keyword; the bloding could just be for display reasons, not Algo reasons. But I tend to think that it is at least a look at what Google finds important.

I did a search for allinurl:Bush thinking that there would be some about Prez Bush. On the second page of the results you see some capitalized "Bush" in the URL and they aren't highlighted either. So it isn't just regional stuff.

I'm going to take a stab and say that they process the phrase before it is used to highlight the phrase in the URLs and somewhere in the process they remove the capitalization. So when they are scanning the URLs to be highlighted, they don't catch the capitalized versions. If this is the case, than the capitalization won't matter to the algo. Again, just a shot from the peanut gallery.

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by flood6

I'm going to take a stab and say that they process the phrase before it is used to highlight the phrase in the URLs and somewhere in the process they remove the capitalization. So when they are scanning the URLs to be highlighted, they don't catch the capitalized versions. If this is the case, than the capitalization won't matter to the algo. Again, just a shot from the peanut gallery.

This is true. It is a "case sensitive" highlighting script, in which they convert the entire search query to lower-case before applying the highlighting. Why they are only doing this to the Urls and not the Title or Description text is a mystery. But there are two methods at play here.

You will also notice (again in the URL's only) that they highlight the query as part of a sub-string (ie indianahospital.org). This type of behaviour does not occur in titles and descriptions.

One would think that Google would be a little more elegant in the coding of that script, eh?

[google junky]

Originally Posted by flood6

So when they are scanning the URLs to be highlighted, they don't catch the capitalized versions. If this is the case, than the capitalization won't matter to the algo. Again, just a shot from the peanut gallery.

As in cache you mean holding the page content information?
Hopefully I understood that correctly.
I know that Google wouldn't be able to store the lowercase version and hope to return using the same lowercase url to re-index the page. If Google was to turn the url to all lowercase and try to return they they would get a 404 page. A website built on Unix server won't allow the lowercase version of an url to be seen if it is anything but an exact match of the original url.

If I didn't unserstand your statement then I apoligize.

[randfish]

I tend to buy into the theory that Google's current database doesn't hang on to capitalization of words for some parts of the search function and this results in the loss of bolding for capitalized versions.

I've always thought it would be interesting if google started using it though, maybe horticulturalists would benefit from so many lowercase searches for the prez.

[flood6]

Originally Posted by google junky

As in cache you mean holding the page content information?

No, catch. As in notice, see, find, whatever.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm going to diagnose you with "Google On The Brain". Go outside immediately (no laptops)!

[ronniethedodger]

Stay inside if you are the Gulf Coast near Mobile Alabama though (but remove the battery pack from that laptop ;-)

[sudhani]

What we need to understand here is googe is promoting good website design practices.

Its always a good practice to have all your urls in small letters and refer them from your webpage using small-letters. This will avoid human errors when the website is hosted on servers those are case sensitive to file names (like linux, unix etc.,)

Its just another instant of promoting good standards. Does this make w3c validation more important?

Sudha.

[google junky]

flood6,

I had read the word wrong and thought you meant "Cache". Evidently, I have been working way too late and screwed up when reading it. Thanks for your reply and helping me open my eyes to read it again.