Links to index.html or actual url - Any difference?

Does internal linking affect PR?

[Tropical Island]

We have a lower border on every page with a link to "home page" with the link as ".index.html". Would it make any difference to PR to make the "home page" link back to "www.mysite.com" as this is the link that Google indexes not index.html?

[fathom]

Either or there is no difference.

My preference is just the domain without index and extension.

[ciml]

My preference would be the same as fathom's. If / and /index.html return different content when Google indexes them, they probably won't be merged and the PageRank will be split between the two almost duplicate listings.

[muesli]

there is another (minor) issue to regard:

domain.com/index.html loads faster than domain.com/ loads faster than domain.com. miliseconds only, but if you're optimizing speed and webserver performance this might be relevant.

[mykel]

I think what Tropical_Island is asking is whether to link to:
domain.com/index.html
or
index.html

[ciml]

> miliseconds

That long? muesli, it's time for a server upgrade. :)

mykel, linking to [example.com...] or / should make no difference, except maybe the word example would count as link text?

[muesli]

I think what Tropical_Island is asking is whether to link to:
domain.com/index.html or index.html

ah ok, absolute or relative URLs are the question? i remember having read a theory googlebot might prefer absolute URLs, either because the 'remapping' of relative URLs costs the bot some performance or because an absolute URL is a higher 'vote' as it seems to go to a different site. don't have an idea myself though.

That long? muesli, it's time for a server upgrade. :)

indeed...