(11)
Google announced they will begin lowercasing the domain and subdomains of the display ads for AdWords.
Let me show you what this means. If I wanted my ad to have a display URL that looked like www.RustyBrick.com, I am out of luck. Google will automatically lowercase the display URL in my AdWords ad to www.rustybrick.com.
From --> To:
--> 
A Search Engine Watch Forums thread is not happy about this. One AdWords advertiser said, "I think Google is nuts, and disagree. I for one am upset and think we should voice our opinions over this bad decision." Another person said, "PenIsland.com is definitely better than penisland.com."
Personally, I like lowercase domains and I had my ad always lowercase. But that is just a style thing, I am sure having uppercase letters in a URL would increase an ads click through rate.
Keep in mind, the filename part of the URL can have uppercase letters.
Google said:
As a result, we've decided to update the appearance of the display URLs of all ads that appear on search results pages in the next week or so. Following the change, the domain portion of your display URL will always be shown in lowercase letters. For example, if your display URL is Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory, it will appear as subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory.
This will happen automatically and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
Comments:
Adwords
01/12/2011 03:58 pm
interesting as when google set up some of my campaigns they recommended to use uppercase lets when they put in the URL. Go figure...
Internet Marketing
01/12/2011 04:34 pm
I also almost always recommend lowercase url's but never thought of the pen island thing haha :)
StaceyCl
01/12/2011 04:41 pm
I always have a higher CTR with when using uppercase letters. I didn't expect it to work but I made 2 ads exactly the same except for the uppercase letters and the one with the capitals did 4x better. I still compare and the uppercase letters seem to make a positive difference. Too Bad.
searchengineman
01/12/2011 10:33 pm
Amazing. I never even noticed the PenIsland.com reference. Thanks for shouting out my original thread Barry. I guess it works in reverse as well. therapist.com - can no longer be TheRapist.com (Take that Trebek! - Saturday Night Live Jeoporady Parody Sean Connery) As an aside some people have paid Big Bucks for Vanity URLS which will only yield fruit if Display URL's can take advantage of this. Googles decision will undercut the value of these domains. This effect will probably be worse with foreign languages. I don't think Google thought this out clearly. Searchengineman
mediasres
01/12/2011 10:38 pm
Wondering if they are cleaning up the graphic ad distinctions on the way towards highlighting others, and what those might be.
Philjpollock
01/12/2011 11:24 pm
I guess this will keep the paid Ad's keep inline with the natural listings, making it harder to distingish between the two.
LarcenIII
01/13/2011 07:38 am
Rofl PenIsland.com... Classic, I'm gonna hafta find somewhere to use that now...
Seo_finder
01/13/2011 02:21 pm
Don't like it! I'v got a client with upper case letters as part of his brand name...
Jeorge Peter
01/14/2011 01:13 am
A nice thing that google adwords has done, makes uniformity for urls and I will not have extra time typing an uppercase and lowerscase letters.
emma
01/14/2011 03:39 pm
Here is another interesting blog about Google uniforming everything. This one talkes about making the top 3 PPC results look the same as organic results...improving CTR for Google? http://search-star.co.uk/blog/2011/01/google-is-testing-top-3-ad-formats/
traxor
01/17/2011 10:48 am
Completely agree.