Whats the different between .htm and .html

I know this is sound like a stupid question, but for an amateur like me, I just curious. I try to search in this forum expecting that this question is being asked before, but no success.

So I would like to know whats the different between .htm and .html file format and whats the effect to our site?

Please you expert here, help me.......

 

To my knowledge the file extension .htm is treated the same as the .html extension.

I believe the .htm extension is a result of DOS file naming restrictions from the good old days.

 

Yeah, .htm is a throwback to the days when a file extension was limited to three characters due to the way M$ dos operating system handled files. Not that things have changed much, if you look at the file extensions on your computer. Three character extensions are the norm, it's just that file extensions can be longer if required. M$, as far as I know, doesn't support them except in browser apps.

Something like that anyway.

As far as a web builder is concerned, .htm and .html are treated the same, except if a file has the same name but different extensions, e.g. index.htm and index.html; the browser will look for and execute, the .html version before the .htm.

 

thanks for the explanation. Really appreciate it. I'm not surprise to see microsoft is behind all this.

 

Hey, talk about being behind - Apple introduced extensions only in Mac OS X a couple of years ago

 

from SEO point of view, which one extension is better actually? When I'm using dreamweaver, by default it will save as .htm

But I saw most of the site that SE optimize, using .html extension.

 

Many people says .html is better, but I disagree.

From my point of view, its better to have no extension at all and use directories, somethying like:

www.yourdomain.com/something-with-keyword/ <-(here you will have and index.xxx whatever extension you want)

That way you keep SEO filenames and in case you need to change from php to html or to asp, you will not have to redirect (with 301 ) all the old ones.

But that's just my point of view.

 

Could you please point me where people says .html is better.

Thanks in advance!

 

Have any of you come across those sites that use keywords as extensions? They use htaccess to make them just like .php etc. I can't remeber where but I've seen www.somemusicsite.com/lyrics.music for instance.

It wouldn't make sense to me if G's algo actually makes any use of the extension but who knows... It might have the slightest of advantages... (Not worth pursuing IMO apart from geek-value/status.)

 

I am sorry but I can not remember now any place talking about it.

As TOPS30 says abopve, it wouldn't make any sense from Google to rank html pages better that others. This is only a matter of speculation or personal experiences. Search on this forums as I think I have read something about it here.

On the other hand, and a little bit off-topic, maybe you can think about using .html (or not) and if you do not have so many pages on the site use mode reqrite top keep em on top folder, something like... http://www.yoursite/folder1-folder2-keyword.html.

But I repeat: I really think is better to have no extension at all.

 

taught .html was ment to be used once html 4.1 standard came out, but i could be wrong

as for mod_rewrite its an excellent plugin for apache that well is probably the best tool in a seo's toolbox

 

Tresman, I never thought of that!

Thanks for the tip, I'm going to look into it!

Although it's obviously a trick rather than the absolutely correct way of doing it...


BTW, .htm instead of .html to save space and BW?!?