Is www.domain.com/page the same url as www.domain.com/page/ for Google? (extra slash at end of url)

[HMK-NL]

Dear all,

in open site explorer there is a difference the url's 'www.domain.com/page' and 'www.domain.com/page/' (extra slash at end). There can be different values in pageauthority etc. in the open site explorer tool, but is this also the case for Google?

Thanks for replying,

Regards,

Ben

[Asher]

From what I have noticed, and this is not carved in stone, Google defaults a url with a "/" on the end.  Meaning, example.com/page and example.com/page/ are considered the same URL. And if you type example.com/page in Chrome, it will give you the example.com/page/ URL in address bar.  However, in Bing, this is not considered the same.  In Bing, example.com/page and example.com/page/ or two separate URLs.  I hope that helps.

[tomhall90]

Hi there,

A similar question was asked here: http://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-at-end-of-url

And it seems that the REAL answer probably is: It's completely down to your own preference.

All I would recommend is that if you do decide to have (www.)example.com**"/" **then make sure whenever you are linking to your website from another website to include the **"/" **at the end.

Always be uniform in how you link to your website. It's the easiest way to avoid mistakes, in my experience!

Hope this is of some help.

Tom

[TakeshiYoung]

Trailing slashes are treated as separate pages. Best to stick to one, and configure your .htaccess file so that one 301s to the other:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html

[danatanseo]

My favorite article on this subject is Maile Ouye's "To Slash or Not to Slash" in the Official Google Webmaster's blog.

While you might be able to initiate a 301 redirect for the scenario you mentioned: www.domain.com/page/ versus www.domain.com/page  , it's worth noting that Maile says:

"If both slash and non-trailing-slash versions contain the same content and each returns 200, you can:.....Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck Norris."

Rarely does a Googler state something that clearly.   Definitely one of my favorite quotes from the Webmasters' Blog!