What are internal links?

Internal vs. external links

[pmkpmk]

We all know that internal links are a way to spread PR among pages. We also know, that external links send PR to external pages.

Now the question is, WHAT exactly is an INTERNAL link?

If my site is www.company.com, and I want to link to www.company.com/foo.html. which form should I chose:

a) <a href="http://www.company.com/foo.html">
b) <a href="/foo.html">

Wehre version "b" is very clearly a relative internal link, I wonder if search engines in general and Google in special see version "a" also as internal (since the URL-base is the same)?

Any suggestions?

[larryhatch]

MY understanding is that any link from site A to any other page of the same site A is an internal link.
Both examples you gave are internal links.

The difference between them is (if I have this right) relative or absolute addressing.

Personally, I use absolute (full length [...)...] addresses for all my internal links to pages,
and relative links to the images. That just makes it easier to maintain my site.

An EXTERNAL link is any link (regardless of form) from any page of site A to any page on some OTHER site B.
This could also be called an outgoing, outbound or external link.

Should site B link to your site A, that is an incoming link or a back-link. - Larry

[rj87uk]

b) <a href="/foo.html">

I use this but as far as i know it doesnt matter what you do rather how you use the anchor text.

You should link to a internal page with the keywords of that page.

You should use text and not images.
You shouldnt use Javascript, redirects or Variables (?cat=1)

and you shouldnt use the new no follow tag :-o

[chrisnrae]

A would be an absolute link while B would be a relative link. Both are internal links, regardless of the format you use. An older thread [webmasterworld.com] you may find interesting.