Extension-less URLS to extension and vice versa - does it affect PA?
-
Quick question: Will adding an extension such as .html or .php to a URL affect the Page Authority?
Long explanation:
My site is built in Drupal, and has the rewrite rules in place to redirect URLs with .php extension to no extension URLs. For example, the real URL for one of my pages is: http://www.trueresults.com/index.php?q=get-started. Because of the rewrite rule, it is rewritten to http://www.trueresults.com/get-started by Drupal.
If I wanted to keep the url the same, but add an extension to the end (ie. ".html") would that affect my Page Authority? Would Google consider this an entirely new URL?
The reasoning behind this is I am working on setting up some goals and events in my analytics and it requires urls with an extension, it's not accepting my "extension-less" urls.
thanks!
-
Thanks for the feeback, based on the responses I've got, I'm going to leave them as-is (extension-less). Regarding the extensions being needed to work with my Goals setup in Google Analytics, I was having trouble getting it to work and speculated that it was due to the missing extension, but now that I know that doesn't matter. I can figure out what the "real" issue is. thanks!
-
Extensionless URLs are a good idea because it helps with unavoidable future platform transitions. If you switch server technologies, you might end pages in .jsp or .html or something else.
Search engines generally consider every character when determining separate URLs. This goes for adding .html and even capital letters. Therefore, these two URLs are different in the eyes of search engines:
But to really answer your question, adding an extension should have little to no effect on page authority. Search engines are more concerned with your page's content, relevancy, popularity, authority, etc.
-
To answer your question, if you use appropriate 301 redirects this should not affect your PA.
However you should not need to do this to facilitate your analytics. Why won't it work with an extension?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
/essions/essions keeps appending to 1 url on our website
Moz keeps giving us an error showing URL too long, when I investigate the offending url, I get this in the crawl. We can't work out what /essions is or why it's appending to the end of the url. Is this a Moz or website issue? <colgroup><col width="841"></colgroup>
Moz Pro | | NickWillWright
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |
| https://www.mywebsite/singita-lebombo-lodge/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/essions/ |0 -
Do we get "Removal of "nofollow" from first custom URL on profile" when we cross 200 Moz Points? I have not received it yet, anything I can do?
Though I have only recently subscribed to Moz Pro, I have been using Moz Blog for quite some time. I recently crossed 200 Moz Points. As per Moz Points, it says "Removal of "nofollow" from first custom URL on profile" for crossing 200 points. I still dont see any links from Moz when I am using OSE. Can anyone suggest what i need to do?
Moz Pro | | vinodh-spintadigital2 -
My index URL was removed from Google, but all others remain in the search engines
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Couple of weeks back we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. It used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Moz Pro | | Verve-Innovation0 -
I have 9 keywords on first page and 4 of them in top 3 but less clicks
..per GA only some 60 clicks a day and keywords are middle good..dont understand why??? I should have some 10 times more at least .
Moz Pro | | villaszilic0 -
Configure parameter effect in google wmt to reduce overly dynamic urls
We are looking at a weatherforecast site with realtime information that is updated every 5 minutes. For this website many urls have 6 parameters The SEOmoz campagne found duplicate information and overly dynamic urls. Then we went to google wmt section url parameters and configured parameters like day, month, year (effect: none). The next weekly SEOmoz campagne showed a big reduction in duplicates and small reduction overly dynamic urls. How can we reduce these 'errors' further?
Moz Pro | | theonlinefactory0 -
Why does Open Site Explorer show less inbound links than yahoo site Explorer?
Hello, We have a question regarding inbound link measurement. We used to measure our inbound links with yahoo site explorer. Now that it's been shut down we use opensiteexplorer.org. However, Open Site Explorer only shows a fraction of inbound links compared to yahoo site explorer. For our website www.theprintspace.co.uk yahoo site explorer measured approx. 14,000 inbound links, whereas open Site Explorer only counts approx. 3,000. This is more than 10,000 links less. For our other website www.theprintspace.de Open Site Explorer also shows 3000 links less than Yahoo. How can this be? Does Open Site Explorer count the links in a different way to Yahoo? Please explain. It would be great if you could help us with this. Thank you!
Moz Pro | | Waplington0 -
Open Site Explorer Missing URL's
I see a link to my site on a couple different url's, but they are not listed in OSE. The links have been active for a long time too. Does OSE not track all inbound links from all sites? Thanks, Stephen
Moz Pro | | stats440 -
Looking for a tool that can pull OSE stats for a bulk amount of URLs
I know that people have developed inhouse tools with the OSE API that can analyze thousands of URLs and pull metrics like PA, inbound links, etc. I need to analyze about 80k URLs and sort them by authority and I was hoping that someone could point me to a tool that can do this or let me use their tool. I'm willing to pay for access to it. We could build it inhouse, I imagine that it would be pretty easy, but our IT resources are stretched too thin right now.
Moz Pro | | Business.com0