Are filename.php and filename.html equal in Google's eye?

Any indexing/ranking problems with .php file extensions vs .html?

[Perfection]

I have a site whose pages are all whatever.html. I'll soon have a new site whose pages will all be whatever.php.

As far as indexing and rankings are concerned, will there be any difference on Google?

As in, will using .php file extensions put me at ANY kind of disadvantage over using .html extensions?

Thanks.

[tedster]

No file extension puts you at an advantage or disadvantage in the algorithm. However, if you change the file extension of an existing url -- then you have a new url. It will need to go through a new evaluation in Google's back end, and rankings for the old url will vanish if that url vanishes. During that transition period you can lose a lot!

If you are carrying legacy pages over to the new website (or possibly even if you're not) you may find real help in this thread:

Parsing HTML as PHP [webmasterworld.com]

You don't need to use the php extension to have the php handler parse the pages.

[Perfection]

tedster, thanks for the reply.

These will be brand new pages of a brand new site. I just mentioned the .html pages of another site to help explain my question better.

So then, if the brand new pages of this brand new site are all index.php, abc.php, xyz.php, 123.php, etc., Google will index and rank it all exactly the same as it would if the pages were index.html, abc.html, xyz.html, and 123.html?

That's probably how I should have originally asked this question. =)

Thanks again.

[edited by: Perfection at 2:12 am (utc) on Aug. 17, 2007]

[Robert Charlton]

So then, if the brand new pages of this brand new site are all index.php, abc.php, xyz.php, 123.php, etc., Google will index and rank it all exactly the same as it would if the pages were index.html, abc.html, xyz.html, and 123.html?

Yes... except that Google should never see a url that includes either index.php, index.html, index.asp, etc. Instead, Google (and your users) should see either (but not both)...

http://www.example.com/
or...
http://example.com/

For more information on why you don't want your index.*** pages to appear in your urls, see this thread, which appears in the Hot Topics section at the top of the Google Search forum home page....

Domain Root vs. index.html [webmasterworld.com] - another kind of duplicate

[Perfection]

Thanks Robert. Exactly the reply I needed.