Absolute or Relative Linking - Current Thoughts

Read lots of discussions and I'm still confused

[warlordbb]

First let me say I have read lots of discussions here concering this, but I'm still confused as to current thought. Especially when I start reading posts that talk about reducing non-content "noise".

I read Brett's excellent article on the subject, but I think it was written back in 1999. Things change. Here is a discussion that points to most of the stuff I have already read:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Now my question. Is Absolute best for us? If it has an impact on rankings, it's a no brainer, but if only for the Google cache thing, I'm inclined to think not (although I claim nothing more than "newb" status, so...).

Here's our situation:

Our site uses relative linking exclusively. We have three sites:

www.oursite.com
proof.oursite.com
stage.oursite.com

We did this so that we could "proof" changes before implementation (and have people from anywhere proof them) and likewise so we could "stage" development ideas.

We used relative linking for simplicity of code so that we don't have to do any special tricks for each site.

However, except for the Home Page, our site is completely data driven and it would be child's play to make all links absolute. Worthwhile? Necessary? Vital?

Your thoughts, suggestions and comments are appreciated.

[Birdman]

I have seen no need for absolute urls when linking internally. It does not seem to affect my cached page.

[Receptional Andy]

As longs as the links work, what's the difference?
The only possible advantage I can think of with absolute URLs is if search engines saw these as external links, and took this as a 'vote' for your pages from another site. But for search engines to differentiate between sites that used relative links and those that used absolute would be pointless.

If the link on the page is to [site.com...] when I click it I request [site.com...]
If I'm on the home page and the link is to /page.htm I request [site.com...]

Looks the same to me...

>but if only for the Google cache thing
As birdman says, what does this have to do with the cache?

[thought]Lots of people concerned with their cached pages recently[/thought]

[Chris_R]

The google cache can cause problems with certain links such as popups that are relative as google thinks they are coming from:

[216.239.53.100...]

Don't worry about it affecting you ranking. It won't.