Relative paths vs absolute paths for links - is there a difference?
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I almost always use absolute URLs. Dana has a point about efficiency, and a lot of developers HATE writing anything but relative URLs, but I think most modern servers can handle the load just fine, and developers can be bribed with cookies.
The advantage of Absolute URLs is they're less likely to break with various CMS's (content management systems) and on-page elements. I've seen javascript do some crazy things to relative URLs causing 1000's of broken, uncrawlable links.
And when your content is scraped, either for black hat reasons or perfectly legitimate reasons like embedded RSS feeds, then you get full credit for the link. But to be fair, and to recognize Gamer07's point, Google likely devalues most of these links anyway once they detect the duplicate content.
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Well, if we go like that. Wouldn't it also involve a risk of negative SEO? A site who rips content from another is more likely to be considered a spam site. (linking to your site now)
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However, if you use absolute URLs, if your content gets ripped off you have links back to your own content now, and people can know it's your content. It can also help to force http or https.
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Thank you for the invaluable information
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Hi Cenk,
Yes, it is better to use relative paths when linking on your site to your internal pages. This reduces the number of server calls on a page and can increase your page speed and efficiency. Now, does that factor specifically factor into algorithm? I don't know. But page speed is part of the algorthm, so I suppose you could say that indirectly it does have an effect on algorithms and how your site potentially ranks.
One caveat: Use absolute URLs for your canonical tags. Search engines have problems interpreting relative URLs when they are in a canonical tag. I learned this the hard way!
Hope that helps!
Dana
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