File extension affect on seo

.htm, .html, .php, .asp, etc.

[justgowithit]

I recently began using the .php file extensions on a newer website, where in the past I have parsed files to maintain the .htm/.html file extension. I suppose this is trivial, but I find it unusual to look at my pages and see the .php extension and began to wonder if there are any negative effects of a less traditional file extension in terms of seo, indexing, etc.

Or perhaps a more direct question would be, what are the benefits (if any) to a traditional file extension like .html or .htm over dynamic extensions like .php or .asp?

[hp11]

My belief is that search engine spiders only make http requests - the same as your vistors browser does. So, as long as you are not feeding the spiders one thing and vistors something else - it should be fine.

I would just ensure that everything was set up properly, my pages validated and I would definitely check my pages with a spider simulator, such as this one, [searchengineworld.com ].

[jdMorgan]

> Or perhaps a more direct question would be, what are the benefits (if any) to a traditional file extension like .html or .htm over dynamic extensions like .php or .asp?

None. In fact, the W3C is recomending that we all go "extensionless" in the future, since our visitors don't really care about the underlying technology of our sites.

As long as the MIME-type in the server response header correctly indicates the type of content being returned, no one cares about the "filetype" except the webmaster.

Jim