Forgot the / - no wonder google does not like my site!

[luditus01]

Hi everybody,

I just discovered, that in my main index area I forgot to enclose the slash. The site worked perfectly, but I always wondered why I got only traffic to the index and not to the content area.

Now having fixed that by setting it to /dir/file.htm instead of dir/file.htm
I am wondering if I should change my strategie and remove the base meta tag and use absolute links. There are many subdomain links inside my app, but that worked perfect with the base ref. However I am wondering if google and other SE make a difference between absolute and relative.

Here are my questions:
1. When do you guys think will I see my results due to the change with the / inside the google search results?
2. Do you think I should switch to absolut URL's?

Thank you for any advice,

Merlin :)

[vayapues]

Absolute vrs Relative links should not make a difference for the Google, or any other spider. It is a matter of preference, and planning.

I always use absolute links, but it is because I build dynamic sites. I never know where a design element with embedded links is going to appear. ie, I might have a design wrapper saved in an includes file. /includes/wrapper.php

I may than use this design wrapper as the base for all my pages, allowing me to change my design in one place, and have it instantly propagate throughout the site.

As a result, I don't know if the wrapper will be opened on the /root, or from within a deeper folder. With absolute links, it does not matter.

Relative links can be a powerful tool, if you plan on moving contents within a folder to a new folder, and want all the links within that folder to still work.

I don't believe the decision should be based on SEO, but rather on how you have planned your site.

[seoimage]

According to Matt Cutts, Absolute links are recommended especially for content based sites, as scrapers and bottom of the barrel companies will steal content.

Duplicate content on or off your domain is bad! Many companies that have been cloned, now use absolute links to hinder this.

[vayapues]

seoimage, Not sure I understand how using absolute links will hinder someone from stealing your content, please explain further. Also, I don't recall Matt ever talking about absolute links, except as it applies to sitemaps. could you post a link?

Using relative links can cause duplicate content issues within your own site. For example, if I link to /index.php and everyone else links to www.site.com, I can end up with two seperate pageranks for the same page, and end up getting the same page spidered twice. However, if you setup your server correctly, (ie to issue 301 redirects) this is not an issue.

[luditus01]

Thank you everybody for your comments. I think I got the point and it has helped me to rethink my strategie on where which type of link is needed.

I do have a question regarding server setup though. You wrote that the server has to be set up correctly to handle 301's. Could you go more into detail what you mean by that? Could you make an example for apache?

Thank you in advance