Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. What's the SEO impact of url suffixes?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    What's the SEO impact of url suffixes?

    Technical SEO
    3
    5
    5135
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Cornucopia
      Cornucopia last edited by

      Is there an advantage/disadvantage to adding an .html suffix to urls in a CMS like WordPress. Plugins exist to do it, but it seems better for the user to leave it off. What do search engines prefer?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • dumperama
        dumperama @RyanKent last edited by

        After I finished work, I will dig through my history and can hopefully deliver.

        Update: I spent 1 hour going through my browser history and I was not able to find it. Kinda freaks me out. Sorry.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • RyanKent
          RyanKent @dumperama last edited by

          I would love to see the study if you can find the link later. I agree sometimes study results conflict with prior conceptions and I have been mistaken before, but those study results really sound counter intuitive.

          dumperama 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • dumperama
            dumperama last edited by

            There are actually some studies that can be found on the internet that suggest that the CTR correlates with the extension shown on the SERP, namely .html is supposedly having a positive impact on the CTR of up to 200%.

            I was trying hard to find the website I read it on, but on the quick I couldn't find it. It contained a "study" on it with eyetracking and it made sense.

            I've personally never run a test on it, but I decided to add html to our documents by means of Mod Rewrite.

            As far as search engines are concerned, it does not matter at all. But overall, the visitor should be more important and seeing that it does not negatively impact rankings, it's worth a try.

            RyanKent 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • RyanKent
              RyanKent last edited by

              When possible, always remove the .html or any technology suffix such as .php, .htm, etc. A few reasons:

              • this information offers no value to users nor search engines

              • it needlessly increases the length of your URL

              • it offers hackers an additional piece of information about your web server files. You want to make the bad guys work as hard as possible

              • it helps a lot with SEO when you change technologies. There is good reason for .html pages to move to .php pages. When that change is made, all the pages on a site need to be 301'd. The entire process is a big waste of link juice for the entire site which could be avoided if the technology extension did not exist. While .html and .php pages are common today, next year .seo pages might be the popular extension.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Mediaholix

                Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?

                Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO.  It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors'  Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag.  Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.

                Technical SEO | | Mediaholix
                0
              • SamaritansPurse

                Domain Masking SEO Impact

                I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?

                Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse
                0
              • jsilapas

                Word mentioned twice in URL? Bad for SEO?

                Is a URL like the one below going to hurt SEO for this page? /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html I like the match the URL and H1s as close as possible but in this case it looks a bit funky. /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html

                Technical SEO | | jsilapas
                0
              • KatherineWatierOng

                Loading images below the fold? Impact on SEO

                I got this from my developers. Does anyone know if this will be a SEO issue? We hope to lazy-load images below the fold where possible, to increase render speed - are you aware of any potential issues with this approach from an SEO point of view?

                Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng
                1
              • DeptAgency

                Is there a way for me to automatically download a website's sitemap.xml every month?

                From now on we want to store all our sitemap.xml over the next years. Its a nice archive to have that allows us to analyse how many pages we have on our website and which ones were removed/redirected. Any suggestions? Thanks

                Technical SEO | | DeptAgency
                0
              • Crumpled_Dog

                Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?

                I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
                Scott

                Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
                0
              • A_Q

                Blank pages in Google's webcache

                Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
                Elias

                Technical SEO | | A_Q
                0
              • firstconversion

                Sharepoint SEO - How to lowercase urls with rewrite rules?

                We have a  borked website running on sharepoint IIS .net that has been at the mercy of many bad developers We have rewrite rules with an ini file for 301s etc. We are struggling to find out or figure out how to lowercase them The lowercase functionality may be native within sharepoint somewhere Any help appreciated! Sorry its so vague S

                Technical SEO | | firstconversion
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.