It has always been a tricky path to make your page listing in SERPs stand out based on something else except for unique and catchy copy. Making your title in ALL CAPS in one such quite questionable tactic discussed at WebmasterWorld forums.
One of the questions discussed is: Can capitalization really effect the rankings? Does Google give more weigh to ALL IN CAPS words (like words in bold)?
Officially Google states it doesn’t care about the case:
Search is always case insensitive. Searching for [ new york times ] is the same as searching for [ New York Times ].
However sometimes people do notice some fluctuation (I have personally never seen this myself, have you?).
Another question is what impact a page listing in ALL CAPS has on click-through and conversion:
very good question Ann – here’s where I take the position of a marketing professional. Using all caps is essentially shouting in the digital world right?
And when I put myself in the shoes of prospective visitors, I think using first letter caps, makes it easier to the person doing the search to read.
In my testing in organic titles with all caps, no caps or first letter caps on every word, we see more clicks with first letter caps, no commas or hyphens, and when using the pipe (|) symbol to split out text.
I personally associate most closely to being like spam. However, I have tested this across a variety of sites in the past, crossing several demographics and markets.
I can conclude that there is a BIG difference in CTR when you use all capitals on one demographic/market compared to another.
John,
Did you mean there is a positive effect on CTR?
There seem to be 2 issues here, search engine ranking and CTR. Of course, over some time (I’m no expert so I won’t claim to know how much time), higher CTR should result in a higher ranking, but it seems unlikely that just the fact that something is in all caps would automatically make it rank higher within the search procedures themselves. Doesn’t seem like google would care to actually add that kind of a “feature” in. And the best/easiest thing to do in any database text string search or comparison is to just make it case insentive, otherwise you need to explicitly work out multiple cases (e.g. “NYT” = “nyt”, but maybe “Nyt” “nyt”,). It just seems like too much effort to deal with any of that for it to matter to google. IDK, am I missing something here?
I do not think that caps is an issue when ranking a website. Google has stated as such.
Ann I’ve been wondering about this same thing recently. My thoughts are that a page title (and/or the description) won’t improve rankings but could certainly impact the CTR. Titles would stand out against regular SERP listings but there needs to be a balance because a description in all caps is really hard to read and might discourage users from clicking on the link.
I think it really hurts the visitors when they found a website with all caps.
Even if Google does give it more weight, do you think visitors would feel like they are being YELLED at?
Whether or not Google give weight to caps (& I’d be surprised if they do), I think the only effect it would have on CTR would be negative. It just looks like spam, so people would avoid it.
Even if it did increase CTR or rankings … I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it. Blech.
I THINK ITS A GREAT IDEA TO PUT YOUR TITLE IN ALL CAPS. AN EVEN BETTER IDEA WOULD BE TOPUTEVERTHINGINCAPSAND LEAVEOUTALLTHESPACESASWELL, THATWAYREALESTATEYOUCANSHOVEMORESEXCHOCOLATE KEYWORDSIN.
@Pavlicko, OK, seriously I have no idea how our spam filter didn’t catch your comment :)
A niche web site relating to the visually impaired could possibly contain 100% capitalization and bold text in all its pages.
From a design aspect this would not be ideal as colour contrast rather than size may be more important. My question is would a major search engine downgrade PR or even apply penalties to such web pages?
I think the page title in all caps is win.
I have a greek blog and one of my posts was in capital letters…A google.gr search for the exact keywords without capital letters i did showed that i was not at the first page…When i searched for the title of my blogpost as it was(with capital letters) i was ranking first….
I always thought that page title in capitals was a good method but after this i am not that sure
I prefer to use a good custom meta description though and i think that it is more useful for my blog’s ctr form the serps that a blogpost title in CAPITALS
@Jason, do you have any link to where Google have stated all-caps do not influence search rankings?
In my opinion all caps title tags appear very spammy. If this were a Google AdWords headline the ad would be disapproved, so it’s possible organic listings may be viewed in a similar way and could be a small negative factor towards rankings.
There is no doubt theres is difference between capitalized searches and how SERPs are listed – we have seen several instances where SERPs are different using capitalized letters or not. In my opinion titles in all caps will decrease CTR over time..
Has anybody noticed that the SERPS pages do not typcially even display results that have ALL caps, and the few I have seen are actually PDF documents….
On a quick set of searches, only the search for [ALL CAPS] actually returned any title results that were in all caps.
I think this may be a fundamental difference in CTR for PPC ads and CTR on Organic Serp Snippett Results…
I have had the opportunity to test this with two pages from different domains, ranking first and second for a desired keyword. The ALL CAPS titled page was ranking number one, and a page with only the first character capitalized was ranking second.
The later of the two got more than double the amount of clicks for any given timeperiod! This was in a Swedish SERP.
I rarely come across a title in all caps (or at least one that i notice or remember) and my first thought was that it was hard to read and also frankly “irritating” so you must have read my mind and that’s what i voted for. I assume that google doesn’t care, but i believe searchers do….
I think all caps is great for some B2C websites. Offcourse its not really good for your branding, but I think its a great trick to push up your CTR. But its still a bit spammy.. ;)
I think short title in all caps is ok and I belive it’s more visible and drives more visitors while long trimmed title is ugly
If ALL CAPS has any influence then top rankings in search engines should be more often these one with all caps (in meta tags, in H1, H2)
Nah, I think that you should keep them lower case.
Hi,
I’ve just stumbled upon something I’ve not come across before. In checking a client’s site rankings through google.co.uk I discovered my rank checker had it at #9. When I physically checked it in the browser it was showing at 38ish. The rank checker hadn’t failed me before so what was going on?
I checked it a few times different ways and discovered that if I wrote the search term with capitalization it did indeed show up at #9. Further adding to my confusion, if I used exactly the same search term (capitalized) between “web” and “uk only” one put the site at #9, the other at #38.
So google don’t take capitals into account eh!! Can anyone offer an explanation or feel like trying? I recognise that the “web” and “uk only” will return different results but it’s never been a four page difference before.
Regards
Andy
http://www.pageoneofgoogle.co.uk
The decencies do not allow me to make my title all in caps. I would argue that it’s not readable at all.
Google product search does have editorial guidelines:
Editorial Guidelines
All your product submissions should follow three principles:
* Be honest and factual.
* Describe your message clearly and accurately.
* Include relevant and complete information about your products with attributes.
In addition, make sure you:
* Use Standard Spelling and Grammar. Avoid any repeated and unnecessary use of punctuation, capitalization or symbols. Don’t use exclamation points in your product titles. The use of symbols, numbers, and letters should adhere to the true meaning of the symbol.
* Avoid gimmicky repetition. You may not post excessive, repetitive, or irrelevant keywords.
* Avoid offensive or inappropriate language.
….and the above is just a taste of program policy.
Just ran an extensive period (2 months) of having the title ALL IN CAPS, and now I am going to switch it back to First Letter of Each Word. Overall, my traffic had been on a serious upswing before the switch to all caps, and if I had to guess, I would say it harmed my click through rates because my numbers seemed to plateau. Maybe I hurt myself a bit, but I figure it will finally be worth it to know for sure.