Ok I have come to the realization that I have an issue with link consistency. Some of my links on my site are http://www.blabla/something/bla.html and some are ../something/bla.html and so forth. I think I need to do some organization and want to switch all my links to the full URL. Are there any possible downfalls for doin this? What is the best way to go about doing this? I guess I just need to go through and make sure all URL links are the full URL and also ad a Rel=Canonical on all the sites also displaying the full url? My site has well over 130 pages..that could take a while. I did hear that if you upload a sitemap to google (which I have) they will generally go by the sitemap if they see a conflict. Is there a way to find out if google actually is having a categorization issue and seeing duplicate content? If the sitemap is fixing everything then I don’t want to have to go through all the work of redoing links and adding rel=canonical to EACH PAGE. Thanks for any help guys Here's the site sheffieldfurniture.com
http://www.blabla/something/bla.html and ../something/bla.html are same thing. when you code your site, you can use ../something/bla.html which will in turn be seen by search engines as http://www.blabla/something/bla.html
sultanofseo is correct that the search engines will see both URLs as the same as long as they are both linked from your site. The full URL is the absolute one and shortened one is the relative URL. If you still want to check if there might be a duplicate content issue, then do a search in Google with the site command. For instance do a search like 'site:blabla.com/something/' and if you see the same page showing up multiple times under different URLs then you have a duplicate content issue.
You must remove such kind of URLs as they increase the possibility to have duplicate content on your site because Google treat such URLs as different. The best remedy for canonical issue is the use of permanent redirection (301). You need to put a permanent redirection from unwanted URL to desired URL..
Hmm, now I'm really confused! haha. sultanofseo and revium both said that google views absolute and shortened URL's the same but that is NOT what I've read everywhere else...I'm pretty sure I've even heard Matt Cutts from google say that you should use absolute URLS so you don't have canonicalization issues between absolute and shortened URLS. Chestercaldwel mentioned 301 redirects but this isn't an issue with moving or removing content or pages...its a canonicalization issue with which method (shortened or absolute) I have my link structure set up. Aren't 301's just for moved or removed content?? Jacksamwhite said to do what I suspected...I'm just confused why there's so much confusion and differing answers on the subject!
jpf566 - you are correct that if you use absolute URLs then it completely removes any confusion, so Matt may have said this to remove any doubt. But absolute and relative URLs will be seen the same by Google. If you look at Google's homepage the 'Advertising Programs', 'Business Solutions' and 'About Google' links under the search box all use relative links, and if you look at the latimes.com website they use relative URLs all over their homepage. Many sites use relative URLs without canonical issues. If you are concerned then go ahead and use the absolute URL, that will solve any potential issues. You can setup a canonical tag for your pages if you want, but if you do not have any duplicate content issues then it is not needed but can be used to clear up any doubt. Do a site search as I stated in my previous post, and if you see duplicate pages under different URLs then you can go ahead and implement the canonical tag and/or absolute URLs, otherwise the relative URLs should not be causing any issues for you. Have your rankings dropped, is that why you are concerned about the relative vs absolute URLs?