Relative or Absolute Links

Does it matter?

[bonzibudy]

If we make the links on our homepage relative instead of absolute, will this have any effect (good/bad) on the ranking of the site?

[seindal]

Why should it?

[brotherhood of LAN]

Relative links are smaller, and spiders likes small non-fatty pages :)

I'd use relative, then you have a smaller html/text ratio.

I don't think anyone knows if a better html/text ratio is better for rank....but it's good to have it low anyway.

[pageoneresults]

Here's a good little topic that Brett posted at SEW...

Relative Addressing vs. Absolute [searchengineworld.com]

I use absolute URL's in my main navigation links, i.e. header, left nav and footer includes. I'll then use relative within main content.

A while back, a true professional showed me how they could jack my dns. But, because I was using absolute URLs, they could only get the user to their domain on first click. Once the user clicked on any of my navigation links, the URL changed to my site and thwarted the dns jacking.

I've been using absolute URL's for a long time and cannot offer any evidence that they work better than relative. But, in the case of dns jacking, they offer a sense of security that someone isn't going to jack one of my high ranking domains and steal the traffic. It happens too frequently not to give it consideration. ;)

[bonzibudy]

thanks guys, thats cleared it up nicely (as usual:))

[quiet_man]

sorry to jump in just when the case seems closed, but ...

Out of curiosity, is there any difference between a full hard-coded absolute URL and using relative URLs on a page with a <BASE HREF=""> meta tag? Would using the base href meta provide security against dns jacking? In theory, it seems to offer the best of both worlds - lean code, but absolute addressing. Doesn't it?

[pageoneresults]

Hello quiet_man, funny you should ask that. I've been on this mission to find out as much as I can on the base href. Here was a recent topic that uncovered some interesting information. My understanding is that it is not suitable in this situation. Apparently the base href is to be used when the URI of the page is different than that of the links within that page. I'm still a little confused (dense).

The Base Element [webmasterworld.com]

[sanity]

Hi P1 ,

From my understanding an example of where base href would work would be if you're on a secure page (https://...) and all the nav links on the page need to point to the standard site (http://...).

sanity