Google Says URL Case Applies To Robots.txt Directives

Oct 1, 2021 - 7:31 am 0 by

Google Url Case

We've known for like Google does and can treat the same URL but with different cases differently. So domain.com/Apple vs domain.com/apple can be seen by Google as different URLs. But Google seems to be stricter about this rule when it comes to the robots.txt file.

With domain.com/Apple vs domain.com/apple, Google can tell if the pages are identical and will canonicalize the URL to one of them, so both won't show up in search and Google may consolidate the signals as well.

But maybe if you have a robots.txt directive for domain.com/apple but not for domain.com/Apple, Google may not use Robots directive?

John Mueller from Google posted video on URL case sensitivity and at the 1:08 mark said "another place where the exact URL plays a role is robots.txt. In the robots.txt file you can signal which parts of a website shouldn't be crawled. The robots.txt file also uses exact URLs. So if you have entries there which refer to one version of a URL, they would not apply to other versions of that URL." John did add that it is "rare that we see this cause problems though."

So keep this in mind not just for overall how Google may canonicalize your URLs but also for robots.txt handling.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: November 20, 2024

Nov 20, 2024 - 10:00 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Site Reputation Abuse Policy Now Includes First Party Involvement Or Content Oversight

Nov 20, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Lens Updated For In-Store Shopping

Nov 20, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Makes It Clear It Has Both Site Wide & Page Level Ranking Signals

Nov 20, 2024 - 7:31 am
Other Search Engines

ChatGPT's Search Marketing Share vs Google

Nov 20, 2024 - 7:21 am
Bing Search

Bing Video Search Tests Categorizing Videos

Nov 20, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Ads Gains New Budget Reports