www.example.com VS. www.example.com/

Whenever I type the top level URL for my domain into my word processor I notice the hyperlink forms with that slash at the end of it though I'm not typing that slash myself. Out of habit I don't enter URLs like that with the slash for that same site when I'm online, so other mediums I'm thinking don't add the slash like my word processor does, so I'm thinking and I fear I might be splitting my traffic between the two. Is this a legitimate concern that I'm splitting traffic for keywords between the two so that I don't rank as well overall?

Is there some way I can check that this is what is happening and what's the best solution (eg. A redirect from one to the other... and if so, which one)?

 

I'm pretty sure it's the exact same thing.

For example... Type in google.com in your URL bar at the top of your browser. Hit enter. Your browser automatically adds the trailing slash.

 

i have 2 site like this

without http//:www. <<< PR4
but with http//:www. <<< PR2

so what best solution to keep PR4 to my site ? hope anyone can share ...

 

The slash at the end will not make a difference for link building. rosebeauty - choose which format you want to use and do a 301 redirect from one to another.

 

the trailing slash in the end has no effect on your SEO efforts...

Also, rosebeauty - you should do a 301 - permanent redirection from PR2 to PR4, make sure you do that for all existing URL's.

 

both are same

 

This is very interesting, I have heard of this being possible but never seen it in practice. Can you pm me your URL, just out of curiosity?

You need to consolidate your PR. CHoose which URL will be canonical (whether with www. or without, it doesn't matter), and create a logic that uses a 301-redirect from the non-canonical URLs to redirect to the canonical form. For example, I am hosted on an Apache server so I use .htaccess for this. But you may be on MIIS or another server -- it's a bit different for each server type.

I agree with those who say don't worry about the slash. But www. vs. no www. is something you do need to worry about a little bit, because it can result in a duplicate content problem and a split PR.

 

Ah I guess I had it in my head the http://www. vs. no http://www. instead. So as long as I always keep it uniformed http://www.example.com when entering URLs, I should be good. Thanks for the responses.

 

Both com/ and com are not same. If the site is written in java without "/" can represent a single file...
Example : http://www.google.com/search/ and http://www.google.com/search

 

Make sure to validate both of the same domain within Google Webmaster tools!

 

So wait, what's the final verdict then? They're different, but not in terms of link building so I shouldn't worry about it in that respect?

 

here is my both site :

diagonismos2009.org
givetoworldvoice.com

so what i shoud do,..???

 

Hello,
www is just subdomain (like video-domain-com), so www-domain-com and domain.com are two diferent pages (for search engines)

if you have one PR2 and second PR4 it means, that you have for example 20 backlinks to domain.com and 100 backlinks to www-domain-com

now you promote two sites!

solution is redirect traffic from domain.com to www-domain-com and backlinks will count together (you'll get higher PR)

you can use my own script: (put it in the beginning of index.php)

if($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] != "www.cyberhacking.com"){
$kamhodit = "http://www.cyberhacking.com/";
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header('location: '.$kamhodit.'');
header("Connection: close");
die();
}

 

Having the slash following the url does make a difference with regards to performance. I don't remember the exact technical explanation, but this is close enough.
If you do not have the slash, a web browser will make 2 calls to the website. If you have the slash, only 1 call is made.