Linking to / vs. index.html locally

Should it be one or the other and not both?

[ALbino]

Currently I have a page called "http://www.widgets.com/catalog/". Most of my incoming links from other pages point to that URL, but all of my internal links point back to it as "http://www.widgets.com/catalog/index.html". I have just recently taken notice of this and it seems like it may be affect the overall PR for the starting page. I was just wondering if this should have any affect at all, or if Google treats them as one and the same.

If it is a problem, should I change my internal links to point to "/catalog/" like my external ones do or should I have my external links point to "/catalog/index.html" to match up with my internal ones ("/")? Ideally, though, tell me it isn't a problem and it's all the same thing :)

[mcavic]

In general, search engines treat them as two different pages, and duplicates. I don't know how much effect it would have on your PR, but personally, I'd change the internal links to leave off the index.html.

[ALbino]

Yeah, that's probably the best idea. Too bad the update already started. I guess the good news is I can procrastinate for at least another month :) Thanks.

[jdMorgan]

ALbino,

No, you can procrastinate for another few days.

After the update finishes, Google will do a new deep-crawl. The data they collect will be used for the next update two or three weeks later, meaning end-of-April, beginning-of-May.

Don't wait too long!

Jim

[kovacs]

Your PR will be split between the / and /index.html versions.

Standardize to / in case you want to switch to .shtml, .php etc in the future.

[ALbino]

After the update finishes, Google will do a new deep-crawl. The data they collect will be used for the next update two or three weeks later, meaning end-of-April, beginning-of-May

Dang. You win. I'll change it ;)

Standardize to / in case you want to switch to .shtml, .php etc in the future.

Good point. That's definitely the best route. Thanks for the feedback folks.