Absolute and relative paths for internal links

[adaptiveconsultancy]

I have been looking into absolute and relative paths for internal links, what is better for SEO? Thanks

[ASOS]

Hi,

It shouldn't make a difference. Google will crawl either link and follow them (unless instructred otherwise).

The issues start to come if you want to launch multiple versions of your site (ie different country etc) - you could have issues but this has little to do with SEO, more a technical thing.

This probably doesn't help you much sorry.

[marcinlejman]

Hi Markus,

Absolute links leave less room for confusion and mistakes when it comes to crawling. Google recommends using absolute links here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35156

Keep in mind, this recommendation has nothing to do with your rankings. When properly configured, relative links are as effective as absolute links. There is just a higher risk that a relative link is malformed and broken.

On the other hand, relative links are extremely convenient when you want to change domain name. With absolute links, you would have a lot of search and replace. Something to keep in mind when making a decision.