If it's not in Webmaster Tools, is it Duplicate Title

[sbaylor]

I am showing a lot of errors in my SEOmoz reports for duplicate content and duplicate titles, many of which appear to be related to capitalization vs non-capitalization in the URL.

Case in point, if a URL contains a lower character, such as:

http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-i

as opposed to the same URL having an upper character in the structure:

http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/distinct-microstructure-I

I am finding that some of the internal links on the site use the former structure and other links use the latter structure. These show as duplicate title/content in the SEOmoz reports, but they don't appear as duplicate titles in Webmaster Tools.

My question is, should I try to work with our developers to create a script to change all of the content with cap letters in the destination links internally on the site, or is this a non-issue since it doesn't appear in Webmaster Tools?

[EvolveCreative]

Well, if you type:

inurl:http://www.gallerydirect.com/art/product/allyson-krowitz/ Distinct Microstructure I

In Google you won't see any duplicate or filtered results for the capitalized vs non capitalized version. However, it is best practice to have one single URL per page for link equity reasons. I'm not entirely sure what the 'correct' answer here is, but I'd go for one single URL if the fix isn't too resource intensive. A rel=canonical might be the best option here since some of the URLs might have gathered backlinks over time.

[Everett]

Hello Darin,

Typically search engines do a very good job of figuring out this particular issue. However, you may have a problem because the rel canonical tags are "self referencing". This means that the lower case version says "I'm the canonical!" and the upper case version says "No, I'm the canonical!"

If your developers can force the rel canonical tags to be all lower case URLs (assuming that's what you want to go with as the canonical version) it should take care of any potential issues here. If they want to go ahead and update all internal links to make them lower-case as well it wouldn't hurt. Keep in mind their time and if they could be using it for more important matters that would have a better ROI.

Summary: Fix the rel canonical tag issue by choosing one case or the other for that tag. Consider fixing internal links, as you suggested, if it isn't too time intensive verse other current projects, or at least add it to their plates as something to do in the future when they have time.