Directory or not?

for SEO

[Raymond]

Does having directory affect SERP? For example, consider every other factor is the same, which one "Should" rank better?

www.widget.com/open-widget.asp

or

www.widget.com/action/open-widget.asp

[edited by: oilman at 4:00 pm (utc) on Aug. 18, 2004]
[edit reason] urls de-linked [/edit]

[SEOMike]

From my experience, I've noticed that pages in the root are given a little tiny extra credit. Not only that, but they are found more eaisly. Be sure to keep the pages you don't want indexed in a directory that's controlled by a robots.txt.

[ogletree]

Directory has nothing to do with it. If both pages are linked to from the front page they have equal value. If www.domain.com/directory/page.html is linked to from www.domain.com/directory/index.html it will have less value than a page linked from the front page. G looks at links not directory structure.

[goodroi]

There has been alot of talk about directory possibly not being as good as being in the root and there also has been talk that keywords in the website address possibly give a boost (each search engine is different). Personally I don't see a big difference either way.

I would prefer shorter website adresses so that the user has a better chance of remembering it and manually typing it in.