Using absolute url's instead of relative url's, does it make a difference?

From an SEO point of view, is it better to have absolute paths in your website (so all href's starting with http://www.site.com/path/to/page/page.php) or is it better to have relative paths (/path/to/page/page.php)

I'm using relative paths everywhere and url's rewritten with apache's mod_rewrite, but when i generate a sitemap, on the places where i use relative url's, the url's in the sitemap are wrong.

 

Here is what Google has to say about the issue ...

 

Ah ok, where did you find that ?

 

Click the "Inside Google" link within the post and it will take you straight to the source.
http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/05/few-questions-from-our-google-group.html

 

Thanks very much.

 

thanks for the info. It is considered good design practice to use absolute urls. programs like dreamweaver do not do this by default.

 

let's say you have php pages and the structure is setup so each page has an index.php, like this: "http:/www*widget*com/bluewidget/index.php" would it be better to link to those pages using the above url or could you just use "http:/www*widget*com/bluewidget/"?

 

I'd recommend www.domain.com/folder/ instead of www.domain.com/folder/index.ext ...

because lets say you use index.asp (active server pages), then you redesign your site using php... your new index file is index.php... you'd lose any pagerank/serps...

 

great thanks!

 

Hey there,

I do not know about this SEO issue, but I can as a programmer, it is much easier to transfer domains when relative paths are used.

If you use an absolute path in a flash file, you are going to run into a security issue with flash. For instance.. say you use the path.. http://www.myDomain.com/index.html.. the flash file will work when you type that path in your browser.. but it would throw a hissy when http://myDomain.com/index.html is used.

From what I read for these responses, google wants you to use absolute paths in SITEMAPS, but I would recommend relative paths when developing the actual site.

For the site I just created, that is exactly what I did. Take a look at the sitemap:

http://www.lukebouman.com/siteMapIndex.cfm

Hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Travis Walters