.com .com/ .com/index.html which is it?

Sorry for the stupid newb question, but is the way I set up link code to my homepage going to affect SE's ability to count links?

Are links to the three variations all counted together or separately?

Anyone have a really good link that's not written in w3cese that explains silly things like this?

Thanks.

 

To answer your question. No. No effect at all.

 

.com and .com/ are counted as the same. However .com/index.html is different.

Well Im only talking in terms of PR here... But best to link to the same place. For example if you were lucky enough to own this forum link to fourms.digitalpoint.com and not forums.digitalpoint.com/index.php

 

the extension is only a pointer to a site. usually index.whatever or default.whatever

Can't see how Google differs this since it is looking at the same content of the page.

 

This has a big effect. You should always build links to www.site.com/ and use this in your internal links as well.

Also make sure you use htaccess to redirect site.com to www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html to www.site.com

 

Ah I havent implemented a redirect from mysite.com/index.htm to mysite.com

Ill do that now!

 

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/xooglers PR0
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/xooglers/ PR3

 

mad4,

I can see the difference. Still does not convince me of anything. There could be 0 backlinks to site 1 and 100 backlinks to site 2.

 

Wow quick and informative (even controversial!) answers.

Thanks.

Now, anyone that can point me to a non-techie web glossary for thinkgs like htaccess?

 

Thats exactly the point. There are no links to the PR0 version and lots to the other version.

The 2 pages are being counted as different pages so you are effectively diluting the pagerank between 2 different pages. If you redirect 1 to the other you get 1 strong page.

 

This is correct, to a point.

First, whatever version you choose should be the version you use in your internal links, directories, etc.

But, I wouldn't choose www.site.com/ in most cases. I'd choose www.site.com as the first choice or www.site.com/index.html as the second choice.

 

Why do you prefer /index.html? I was under the impression that it didn't really matter which I choose, as long as I'm consistent.

 

See my post and what you quoted from it. I said my first choice would be www.site.com with no trailing slash. That's because that is the most likely way for people to type in your website address manually and, in my experience, the most likely way for other pages or directories to link to your website.

If I were using forum software or some other software that insisted for some reason to using www.site.com/index.php or whatever as the internal link, then I would take that as a second choice.

Why does it make a difference? Because at the moment different URLs are seen as different pages, even if they wind up at the same page. One of the purported goals of Big Daddy was to improve how that situation is handled by Googlebot, except it doesn't seem to have worked - it seems to have made it worse.

 

It's important to stick with the one link format. Same goes for the www and non www versions. The trailing slash doesnt matter though.

 

Most servers seem to add a trailing slash to the url when you visit the homepage so I tend to link to the www.site.com/ version. I don't have any evidence that this makes a difference though.

 

It does to the extent that it's not the most likely format for others linking to or manually typing in your URL.

That's true. But that's not what SE spiders see. They see the form in the link that takes them to your page and that is more likely NOT to have the trailing slash.

 

I should have been more clearer. It doesn't matter in that there is no PR leakage with or without the trailing slash. Google understands both being the same.

 

Ahhh. thanks. Sorry I misquoted you, minstrel.

 

I wouldn't trust Google to get it right. If you recall, there was a recent admission from the Google Sitemaps team that there was a problem with trailing slashes. they claimed to have fixed it (twice I believe). I'm not sure it is truly fixed yet - maybe more like patched. I think it's symptomatic of some of the other problems different divisions of Google Search are having.

I'd also remind you that there ARE other spiders and search engines to worry about. I'm not willing to trust ANY of them to figure it out. I think it's safer to SPELL it out for them in black and white.

 

Hi Minstrel. Are you thinking that the SE spiders view www.site.com as being different than www.site.com/ ?