Trailing slash at end of URLs?

[McTaggart]

Hi, I'm just about to put up a new site and I need to decide between having no trailing slash at the end of the all the URLs, or putting one in there.

I think Matt Cutts has a slight preference for them, as stated here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more

"Matt says he would slightly advocate for using a trailing slash simply because it clearly indicates that a URL is a folder and not a document."

However, I'm really wondering. I mean, if people link to my site, they'll tend not to insert a trailing slash, I'm thinking...

Your thoughts would be welcome on this one!

Cheers, Luke

[JenWing11]

Gosh some really great input here. Would the server ever write a redirect - I suppose if the htaccess told it to do so ...? I have a few pages on my site that were first changed to include the / then changed back to without the / then changed back again. This actually caused some loss of page authority. What can I do to at least stop this madness and unnecessary redirect writes on my server.

[WeAreDigital_BE]

Hi Guys,

Just as Jon-S, I'm curious about any updates on this item. Does someone have experienced SEO benefits by using or not using a trailing slash at the end of their URLs?

Any news would be more than welcome!

Regards,
Jens

[Jon-S]

Hey All,

Popping my Moz cherry with this post!....Should I include the trailing slash or not?

I know this thread is a little old now but is it still relevant? I'm guessing not, seen as Moz themselves have dropped the trailing slash for this site, check out this posts URL; https://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-at-end-of-url

Any advice would be great as I'm just about to start on a new site and I'm really trying to nail down all the technical stuff.

[blacey]

I've just found this after some searching on Google and (I know its from 2009) but some of the points in the article seem logical. Out the box WordPress (for instance) will add a forward-slash at the end of the URL and I know a few other CMS's do this as well.

One thing I would say is that if you're working on a back-linking campaign (which I fully recommend investing some time in doing btw) then you would want to link to the URL with the end forward slash in the URL, even for the homepage (http://www.domain.com/). If memory serves me right if you access your page with the forward-slash on the end the web server knows your linking to a folder and not a file so it does one less lookup when serving up the page (making the initial request a little bit quicker).

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/linking-issues-why-a-trailing-slash-in-the-url-does-matter/13021/

[blacey]

Hi Luke,

Glad you appreciated the above .htaccess rules, hopefully that will help.

I think file extensions should only be used for anything that isn't .php, .asp, .html etc.

If nothing else it gives you the freedom to change the underlying technology of the site without having to change all the indexed pages in Google using a 301 redirect.

For instance, if I had: www.domain.com/page1.html then it would be better to have this as www.domain.com/page1/

If I had a file it would be best to keep that as: www.domain.com/files/myfile.pdf without the forward-slash at the end.

[McTaggart]

Thanks Ben, O&M, Alex and MHM

(hey Ben, that info's really useful btw! - thanks again!)

One thing I didn't understand O&M is: "One thing you shouldn’t include a slash is after a file name in the URL" - do they mean file name extensions I wonder. I took a look over at Matt Cutts's website and he'd bunged in a trailing slash on all his pages (I think - all the ones I looked at anyway).

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

Since most people leave them off, and most people link that way and it's easyer to set up I have site wide slash removals.

You get a 301 regardless if people link to you wrongly, so be carful when giving out the url and internal linking you use the right on either way.

I'm also not convinced that the article quoted is right in saying that the server does a 301 when you leave it off. It certainly has to do an extra lookup stage to find the right file(look for file, not find, look for directory with defualt document), but theres no 301 header returned.

[Alex-Harford]

It doesn't matter which you choose too much, as long as you're consistent across the website.

I'd go without a stroke; people are more likely to link to you without typing the stroke (as you say), so I think you'll retain slightly more link juice to the chosen URL if you don't include it (saving a 301 redirect from the '/' version). And personally I think a URL looks neater minus the '/'. The speeds "Optimize and Monetize" quotes are minuscule.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Slash all the way......read this article below that explains why it makes sense to do it. She does a better job than I would..... Authors name is Jennifer Kyrnin. Cutts and Kyrnin are in. make it happen.

Traditionally, URLs that pointed to files did not include the trailing slash, while URLs that pointed to directories do include the trailing slash. This means that:

http://webdesign.about.com/example/ is a directory, while
http://webdesign.about.com/example is a file

This helps speed up page loading because the trailing slash immediately tells the web server to go to thatexample/ directory and look for the [index.html](http://webdesign.about.com/od/beginningtutorials/f/index_html.htm) or other default file.

When you go to a URL without the trailing slash, theweb server looks for a file with that name. If it doesn’t find a file with that name, then it looks for a directory and looks for the default file in that directory.

Leaving Off the Slash Results in a Redirect – Redirects Slow Down Web Pages

When you leave off the slash on a URL that is pointing to a directory, you are forcing the server to do a 301 Redirect - HTTP Redirects - 301 Redirect Better than Meta Refreshredirect. While it may seem instantaneous to you, it does take slightly longer for a page to load from a redirect than from the direct URL. And every little bit adds up.

Don’t Include the Slash After Filenames

The only time you shouldn’t include a slash is after a file name in the URL. For example:

Type:
http://webdesign.about.com/example.html
Not:
http://webdesign.about.com/example.html/

If you add the slash, the web server will look for a directory named example.html, and most servers do not then try to find a file name of that name. So your customers would get a 404 error in that situation.

Always Include the Slash When Linking to Your Domain with No File Name

You can speed up access to your home page by including the trailing slash on your domain name URL. For example:

http://webdesign.about.com_/_

While you can’t control what your readers type into their location bar for your URL, you can control what you link them to. Always include the trailing slash in your URL links. If you include it in your marketing materials as well, you can help keep your pages loading quickly for your readers, as most people type whatever is printed without adding or removing characters.

Article link is here....http://webdesign.about.com/od/beginningtutorials/f/why-urls-end-in-slash.htm

[blacey]

You could always force a trailing slash using .htaccess even if someone visits the page without the end slash. Something like this might work, if it doesn't, let me know and I'll get something working for you.

<code>RewriteEngine  On  # Assuming you're running at domain root.  Change to working directory if needed.  RewriteBase  /   # www check  # If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in  # to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1  RewriteCond  %{HTTP_HOST}  !^www\.  [NC]  RewriteRule  ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]  #  # Trailing slash check  # Don't fix direct file links  RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-f RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_URI}  !(.*)/$ RewriteRule  ^(.*)$ $1/  [L,R=301]    # Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php)  RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-f RewriteCond  %{REQUEST_FILENAME}  !-d RewriteRule  .* index.php [QSA,L]</code>