Importance of file extension for search engine optimization

does the file extension make any difference in SEO

[sszgo]

Hello

Does the file extension make any difference when it comes to SEO?

for example

www.domain.com/stories-first.story.htm
www.domain.com/stories-first.story

which one is better to use and why?
I see that the version without .htm is shorter, but again, it tells robots that this is a 'static' page...

Any thoughts anyone?

[Brett_Tabke]

Part of SEO today is generating linkbacks. To do that, you need an easy-to-bookmark, easy-to-remember, easy-to-copy : aka: an easy to link to url. Most designers and optimizers will tell you that your changes of getting those links backs goes up by multiple percentages when you use a standard file extension. It has been my experience that people will not link to nonstandard extensions nearly as often as htm or html extensions.

[ogletree]

As far as Google is concerened it does not matter. I don't have extensions at all. All my URL's are www.domain.com/?pane2=blah_blah. Google spiders my site all the time and I have all my pages listed on Google. I don't know about what Brett says but it makes sense if you want people to link to your internal pages.

[killroy]

hmm, I haven'T had any extensions for the html pages in a long while, all URLs in the format:

www.domain.com/xyz/abc

Isupose link backers will see it as directories, I think it looks more professional.

Please note my sites have no files(except images and the like), only a virtual file system.

SN

[sszgo]

And other thing is

is it better to use

www.domain.com/xyz/abc
or
www.domain.com/xyz-abc

do search engines prefer when file is within root?
when using slashes, it seems that file is within directory, so i suppose files in root should get better results than files within some directory?

and also

is there difference between

www.domain.com/xyz/abc
and
www.domain.com/xyz/abc/

and which one is better to use and why?
first one is one dir closer to root, but maybe in other case, robots prefer accessing directories to single files?