Absolute versus Relative Links

Any difference for SE bots?

[geekay]

If there is, on the various pages of a site, both absolute and relative internal links pointing to the same file, does it make any difference to SE bots? (Please disregard the usefulness as such of inconsistent internal linking structure.)

I know www.example.com and example.com are considered to be different pages, but what about www.example.com/index.html and index.html? Are they Duplicate Pages? I presume not, as SE bots do not crawl a site link to link.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:25 am (utc) on Mar. 25, 2005]
[edit reason] spelling [/edit]

[topr8]

they are the same page

[geekay]

Yes, they are same page, but is there a risk of Duplicate Page Penalty?

[arrowman]

All SE's will recognize / and /index.html as aliases, no doubt.

I consider it good SEO to always link to one canonical URL per page (i prefer /), instead of spreading out links over variations. That way you can be sure all pagerank for that page is concentrated on one URL.

[geekay]

I'm still not sure if the replies mean that there is no risk of Duplicate Content Penalty. An inconsistent use of absolute and relative internal links pointing to the same page certainly can't be that uncommon. Am I the only one who has contemplated possible negative consequences of such a linking structure?

Maybe this is a theoretical non-issue to most of you, but I presume experienced webmasters know the answer. Looking at the way Google handles 302 redirects I take nothing regarding sensible SE behaviour for granted anymore.

[ken_b]

I just recently switched to absolute links with the help of folks in the Apache Forum here.

Google had fully indexed my site as 2 different sites, one site with and one without the www. So duplication was a definite issue for me.

In about a week after I installed the 301 redirect a site: search for either version showed all pages as being from the www. version. I had other issues too, but duplication was part of the whole mess.

Here's a link to the rather long thread [webmasterworld.com] about my situation.

[geekay]

The www and non-www issue is indeed a problem that the webmaster should solve with a 301 redirect, as described above.

However, it concerns EXTERNAL links to, or requests for, your pages. My worries are about INTERNAL linking, i.e. links to other pages within the same site. One can use absolute links internally too, but can I mix absolute and relative links on my site?