The goal of the present paper is the analysis of the effect of geometric imperfections in circular cylindrical shells. Perfect circular shells are characterized by the presence of double shell-like modes, i.e., modes having the same frequency with modal shape shifted of a quarter of wavelength in the circumferential direction. In presence of geometric imperfections, the double natural frequencies split into a pair of distinct frequencies, the splitting is proportional to the level of imperfection. In some cases, the imperfections cause an interesting phenomenon on the modal shapes, which present a strong localization in the circumferential direction. This study is carried out by means of a semi-analytical approach compared with standard finite element analyses.