Trailing slash external back links

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I've just been studying Webmaster Guidelines on duplicate content and notice this.

Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don't link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm

I'm in the habit of including a trailing backslash for the root of a domain. Like this http://www.example.com/ in my internal linking but most of my back links exclude the trailing back slash when pointing to the domain.

I'm just looking for opinions. Should I make my internal links to root match the majority of external links, to root, or does it not matter as long as I'm consistent within my site?

Many thanks

Sid

[tedster]

Two comments - first note that we're talking about a slash (a "forward slash" if you will) and not a backslash.

And second, there is a difference in technical handling between a domain root and a folder/directory root. The quote you offered is talking about an inner directory.

[Hissingsid]

Hi Tedster,

Whoops, jargon buster appreciated. That must be were my Perl is breaking ;)

My question still stands.

Google is clear about pages and directories but what about the root. Is http://www.example.com the same as http://www.example.com/ as far as Google is concerned?

Thanks

Sid

[internetheaven]

Wow. This could be one of the problems I'm experiencing. I have thousands of backlinks to my worst ranking site, but they are a mixture of example.com/folder and example.com/folder/ links.

It would be quite impracticle for me to keep contacting every single person that wants to link to me and asking them to change if they haven't done what everyone else is doing. Surely Google doesn't have problems indexing/ranking/backlink checking based on /'s?

Or is this ONLY for internal linking?

... I sure hope not ... where would you find a definative answer on this?

Thanks
Mike

[jdMorgan]

Go by the book:

www.example.com/page/ is the directory index (if it exists) of the subdirectory "page/"

www.example.com/page is an extensionless page in the root directory named just "page"

www.example.com/page/index.htm is an explicit directory index page in the subdirectory "page/" -- I'd recommend using the the first form above instead.

Keep your internal site links squared-away, and don't let other Webmasters' errors influence your site's internal-linking consistency or correctness.

Jim

[Hissingsid]

Hi JD,

Many thanks for your recommendation.

What would you say is the correct form for root?

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

?

And will mixing these internally affect ranking or more specifically cause a dupe penalty.

It would be nice if Matt Cutts was around if he could give us the definitive answer.

Cheers

Sid

[jdMorgan]

Root: http://www.example.com/

If requested without the slash, many servers will redirect the request to add it.

Jim

[Hissingsid]

Many thanks for that JD.

I've just done a multi file search and replace to make sure I've got those ducks in a row.

Cheers

Sid