Are search engine's case sensitive?

[MktgRob]

Just read a quick note in a newsletter that I receive saying that if your page title is in all caps it will help with your ranking. I know for the sites I have worked on I normally use proper case format in the titles. I am tempted to try this as it will either help or not and can be changed back with little effort and it would not be one of those changes that would set off warning bells with the marketing staff. Has anyone else heard anything about search engines taking page title case structure into account when determining page rank?

[InsightsDigital]

Some time ago, I read an article just on your question on Search Engine Guide's website. The article stated that search engines are not case sensitive. It actually recommended to use lower case words for SEO purposes. Go figure.

[Robdale]

Checkout the following link Google's Search Basic:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=134479

As per Google, search engines are not case sensitive, but search is always case sensitive.

[ArvindSharma]

Search engine are not case sensitive.. but searches are case sensitive

and if you try to put all the caps in the title then i think it does not look natural and it is not gud for the site..

i would link to suggest you that just make the first character of each word capitol in the title tag

[seolake]

It would be absurd if search engines were case-sensitive.

[MktgRob]

It would be absurd if search engines were case-sensitive.

Agreed, but it still wouldn't hurt to try and see if there is anything to it. Admittedly, it would probably be a minor shift but it would be an interesting question to put to the search engines to explain why it is.

[shivanikapoor]

No search engines are not case sensitive

[phoenix06007]

IMO SE's are not case sensitive... for proof you can try searching your keyword by both capitalized and amll letters.. and you will see that the result is still the same

[Flower]

Title tag of any page is very important and helpful in getting rankings from the SEO point of view but by capitalizing the words is not impress search engine's for getting good PR. Search engine are not case sensitive.

[canadafred]

Capitalizing the first letter of an important word in essential in capturing the attention of the qualified visitor who rapidly sifts through the search engine results page hoping to spot what it is he/she seeks.

Capitalizing the first letter of important words indicates that the words must be more valuable than other, stop words or secondary words in the Title. It only seems logical to me that the search engine would recognize the significance of a word when it begins with a capital letter. Does this imply that the SE is case sensitive when determining importance of words? I would think so.

Is it mandatory for a title to contain some words that begin capitalized? No, not at all; however, my experience with crafting Titles over the years has proven to me that when effectively deployed, capitalisation serves a powerful dual-purpose: captures the visitor's attention and as an indicator to the searchengine of the word's importance.

[MktgRob]

It looks like there are a lot of opinions in all of the responses but what would help is if some independent group or person ran some stats and tests on whether or not the SEs are case sensitive. Fred, you never cease to amaze with your grasp of topics and your readable explanations. If you do not blog on SEO you most definitely should.