Uppercase/Lowercase Reading As Duplicate Permalinks

[LindsayE]

I cannot figure out if this is an actual SEO issue or just a crawl reader error. I use Screaming Frog to crawl my site and use their SEO features. When I look at page titles and duplicates it shows all our pages twice... some with 1 letter capitalized and the other not. I don't REALLY have duplicate permalinks do I?

I also noticed when I use some open site explorers and paste in both permalinks the specs will show for the permalink that's all lowercase but it won't find anything for the "duplicate" permalink that is capitalized.

Below I included a few screenshots.

Thank you Moz Fam!

Q6866xZNUfpF cxXacVajCBGb

[GastonRiera]

Hello there!

Technically using those capital letters create different URLs. My advise is to canonicailze those to one or 301 redirect.
Remember that having several URLs with the same content is by definition duplicate content, even if the difference between those URLs are just a Uppercase/Lowercase.

Google stated that they do not care the capital letters as a ranking factor, take a look in these articles:

Using CAPS or Lower Case Letters in URLs for Google SEO Purposes - TheSEMpost
Google: Capital Letters In URLs Doesn't Impact Rankings - SEroundtable
Are URLs Case Sensitive and Does It Matter for SEO? - AbraMillar

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.

[LindsayE]

There are no pages created for the permalinks that are capitalized, we did not create different URLs for these pages. We don't have any duplicate content on our website. When I put the permalink into Google it does show it capitalized in the permalink after it's loaded. Then when I put the same permalink that is not capitalized into Google it shows the same page. However, we most definitely did not create duplicate pages. So is Google seeing it as duplicate content then?

[GastonRiera]

If you type those urls:
*faq.com/medicare-supplement/hawaii/
*faq.com/medicare-supplement/Hawaii/

in tour site, does them load? can you access to those URLs? 
IF those are accesible, then you might have a duplicate content issue.

That doesn't mean that google did understand that are similar pages and leave just one of them.

[LindsayE]

Yes, it seems that they are accessible...

https://www.medicarefaq.com/Medigap/

https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/

Should I do a 301 redirect for each page? I mean... that would be like a few hundred for us... ugh. Still not sure how this happened... my developer said possibly our SEO Yoast?? A quick Google search didn't show any issues with that.

[GastonRiera]

Yeap, both are accesible, but the one with uppercase has a canonical to the other. Here there is no issue, YOAST has resolved that
Check the image attached.

Relax, you are fine in this issue.
Best luck.
GR.

HxKbR

[LindsayE]

Gaston thank you so much!!! I appreciate your extremely fast responses and help with resolving this issue!