Are there SEO benefits to using capital letters in your domain name?

• I've heard that domain names with capital letters may result in added emphasis being placed on the site by the search engines. Is this true?

Answer: First of all, search engines do not place special emphasis on sites that use capital letters in their domain names.

Many sites employ pascal casing or camel casing, the capitalizing of the first letter of each word in a domain name (i.e. youtube.com to YouTube.com) to add emphasis to the viewer. Web servers treat domain names as case-neutral—whether you type the domain name in caps, in lower-case or in a combination of both, you are immediately redirected to the domain name all in lower-case.

However, from a branding and visitor usability standpoint, using capital letters to break up your domain into visually discernable parts can be effective. It helps the site stand out to readers and makes the domain name easier to read. For example,

• PlanetOcean.com vs. planetocean.com
  
  
• MySpace.com vs. myspace.com

When confronted with the above, which ones do you think customers would pay more attention to visually? If you guessed the first examples, which incorporate the natural capitalization and look more natural to the reader, you would be correct! This approach is what we suggest you emphasize in your logos and off-line marketing materials.

Another benefit of using pascal casing in your URL is in designing and implementing Google AdWords ads. Take a look at these two sample ads below. Which one has better emphasis for the reader?

You can see that both ads are nearly the same, but the second ad, which incorporates pascal casing to better emphasize the URL, will typically...