Modern thinking on relative versus absolute internal links

It has been a long time since I visited this problem, what
is the latest thinking? My site has hundreds of pages,
all linked with each other to the maximum.

If I use absolute URL addressing
in these links will I get more respect from any of the big
three, or are relative links just as good?

Best regards
wiz

 

No opinions about this? Or don't you understand what I mean?

For example, when I link to another page on my site I could
use /page3.htm or I could use http://www.whatevermysiteurlis.com/page3.htm

Do the search engines treat the second differently than the
first?

 

Good question.

I use the relative links most the time and it seems that PR is passed from my home page to all my internal pages (except some of my sites that recently had all internal pages dropped for Google index since BigDaddy)

Not sure though if one type, relative vs. absolute, does a better job of passing weight and relavance for SEO purposes.

 

Both have the same weightage

 

I think both are equal, but you should only use one method on each page, not mix the two.

 

Yes both have the same weightage as email_id states but I recommend that you use:

a href="filename.htm" instead of
a href="http://www.domain-name.com/filename.htm"

for the simple reason that your page-size might be reduced to some extent and thereby reducing the bandwidth usage of your site which has been allotted to you by the hosting company.

 

Any particular reason? Other than bandwidth?

 

That statement is based purely on SEO stuff that I have read. I have no way way of confirming or not confirming the validity of it, other than to me it seems logical.

Also, if you use relative links, wouldn't that slow down your page loading, as the browser would have to work out the absolute path, which takes time, a very small amount of time but time nonetheless?

 

Of course most web pages will have both internal and external links,
internal to pages on the home site and external to pages off
site.

 

I have seen sites using relative returns a response blo.co where as absolute returns www.blo.co so in my opinion depends if you want g to index www or not

 

I have seen very highly ranked sites in google using relative links. I personally don't think it matters for seo.

I use relative links. You save on bandwidth and your users get the page loaded faster.

 

I don't see why it should matter to the engines, therefore I don't worry about it.