domain.com/x.htm VS domain.com/x

[olly]

We currently have a "category" page on our site which has a list of products. Presently the pages use the following convention:

domain.com/x.htm
domain.com/x/product1.htm
domain.com/x/product2.htm
etc

Is there any advantage in having the category page as:
domain.com/x
i.e. A directory?

It was my belief that the difference was trivial, I write this because an SEO professional (whose skills I am trying to gauge) asserted advantages with the directory approach.

[aakk9999]

domain.com/x
.e. A directory?

The above is not a directory, it is still a file. To be a directory, it should end with slash, e.g. domain.com/x/

But to answer your question, from Google point of view, I don't think it matters at all. If the sole reason of change was to make it be directory then personally I would not change it.

[Jonny6]

It makes no difference

domain.com/x could be a file or a folder
domain.com/x/ is a folder

even domain.com/x.html could be a folder

test it out ;)

[olly]

Jonny6, I understand what you are saying.

To quote the company in question:

"Another big problem is that this page http://www.ourdomain.com/category-page.htm should be this directory http://www.ourdomain.com/category-page/. The whole idea of a directory structure is to build authority for that page and on your websites the directories do not stand alone, the directories currently go to a 404 page".

It is true that http://www.ourdomain.com/category-page/ currently receives a 404, as we have purposefully set it up as http://www.ourdomain.com/category-page.htm

Given my previous viewpoint and what I've heard here, I'm not sure I agree with what the company has indicated..

[edited by: tedster at 8:39 pm (utc) on Jan 10, 2011]
[edit reason] make example URLs visible [/edit]

[aakk9999]

domain.com/x could be a file or a folder
domain.com/x/ is a folder

Technically, this is not correct. Folder ends with slash. Whether the actual URL (which does or does not end with slash) gets internally rewritten to a file or to a "folder" is a different issue.

As far as I know, Google will not "chop" URL and request folders, which is the only reason why by removing product1.htm from domain.com/x/product1.htm a folder would be requested and you would get 404.

The users might, however, do this but this is usability issue, not Google ranking issue.

[g1smd]

domain.com/x could be a file or a folder
domain.com/x/ is a folder

Referring to the HTTP specifications...

/x

is a file,

/x/

is a folder or the index page in a folder.

This is especially important when a site uses relative internal linking (not recommended), and leads to a lot of unexplained problems when URL rewriting is employed.