Important with absolute links in source code?

[Blackie]

Again, was talking with one of my colleagues and we are having different opinions on this one.

He thinks:
When we link to different pages on our site we should if possible always use absolute URL’s instead of relative URL’s. This ensures that the robots are able to figure out the navigation on our websites.

My thoughs are this does not matter anymore. G, Y and others can read a relative path.

What do you think?

[ogletree]

Yes google has no problem with this. But if someone hijacks your website you only lose one page if you use absolute URL's. You lose all the pages if you relative.

[py9jmas]

The only bots who have failed to follow my relative links * are bots from China claiming to be IE (for example).

* of the form
<a href="./"> and <a href="../">

[Blackie]

I guess the conclusion will be to use absolute paths :-). *hijacking thing is probably enough alone for doing it, though my pages are not getting hijacked so often :-)*