Google says that they treat search queries as case-insensitive and all letters in a search phrase are always interpreted in lower case. For example, searches for barack obama, Barack Obama and BARACK OBAMA will all return the same results on Google.
There are however instances when the case of a search query is as important as the search phrase itself because the word meaning can change with the case. Some examples of Capitonym words include March (month) & march (walk), Polish (language of Poland) & polish (to shine), Bill (person’s name) & bill (invoice), etc.
For instance, "Ram" is the name of a Hindu God while "RAM" is an abbreviation for Random Access Memory. They both share the same spelling and it’s the case that helps you understand the real context of the word. Unfortunately, Google searches are not case sensitive (or fold case) and hence most search results for Ram or RAM are about the "temporary" memory.
To solve this problem and help you conduct case sensitive searches on Google, someone has created a Google Appengine powered search engine at Case Sensitive Search - it scans through Google search results and filters out results that match the case of your search query.
Coming back to original example, here’s is a comparison of case sensitive Google search results for "Ram" vs. "RAM".
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/search/case-sensitive-google-search/6279/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Amit,
That was a wow post, this is how you make me think “wow” at times. Why didnt I ever think of this..?
And Google,
Add the case sesitive search option to advanced search, its a shame that you can do that yet.
Cheers.
Written by Arun Basil Lal on 12.30.08
Hi Amit,
Nice Tip! Never thought about that. All I know that google uses case-insensitive checking. This will help on my future “Googling”.
Happy New Year! ^_^
Written by TechMata on 12.31.08
This is really very simple thing which I never thought of. Very minute but technically helpful post. Thanks.
Written by Vivek Keserwani on 01.02.09
Agree 100% that this was a wow post. I’ve wondered about this many times, even Googled but maybe cudn’t find bcoz I didn’t believe it would be possible.
Written by anonymous on 01.02.09
after reading post I was checking the real result by typing “Ram” and “RAM”, both are showing different results. I was searching these results in google.co.in, there was no any difference in the result. But if I add a word with “Ram” like “singh” then results will display the list of person related.
Written by Suresh on 01.07.09
Amit and everyone, thanx for your comments.
Since my app does not support advanced search options like site:hostname.com, I thought of adding advanced search support. Any other suggestion is warmly welcomed.
Written by bpgergo on 01.10.09