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
-
Why would DA and Home Page PA divurge
I track home page Page Authority and Domain Authority. Normally they move in a similar fashion. However for at least one client I see them moving in markedly opposite directions. One client has seen their Home page PA increase from 29 to 33 ov er the past year or so while their DA is dropped from 22 to 16. Potentially related are odd trends in home page inbound link counts and linking domains. Moz reported 241 inbound link to the home page last December, and 324 now. For the months April through July, however, Moz reported link counts between 1150 and 1350. Linking domains improved from 120 last December to 324 now. I of course recognize that raw counts of links and linking domains need to be tempered with quality considerations. But still, I'm finding is puzzling and wondering if anyone has any thoughts about why the Page Authority and Domain Authority would be diverging.. B8W2wuB
Moz Pro | | btreloar0 -
/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 -
Url-delimiter vs. SEO
Hi all, Our customer is building a new homepage. Therefore, they use pages, which are generated out of a special module. Like a blog-page out of the blog-module (not only for blogs, also for lightboxes). For that, the programmer is using an url-delimiter for his url-parsing. The url-delimiter is for example a /b/ or /s/. The url would look like this: www.test.ch/de/blog/b/an-article www.test.ch/de/s/management-coaching Does the url-delimiter (/b/ or /s/ in the url) have a negative influence on SEO? Should we remove the /b/ or /s/ for a better seo-performance Thank you in advance for your feedback. Greetings. Samuel
Moz Pro | | brunoe10 -
Missing Meta Description in Pop Up Image Gallery URL
Hi there, Moz has reported that I have a lot of missing meta description in the Pop Up Image Gallery. There are over 150 of these that are missing. The issue is that in our CMS I cannot add meta description to images. I am also not entirely sure why the images I am loading up are generating their own URL like the one below. Possibly that is why Moz is saying it needs a meta description when it is only an image?. An example of the link that has missing meta description that I can't add would be something like this: http://www.domianhere.com/products/PopUpImageGallery/93/1?iframe=true When clicking these links it is purely an image with no text. So basically I am asking how do you add a meta description to a Pop Up image Gallery photo URL and/or possibly why would an image create a custom URL so I have to put in a Meta Description? Hopefully that makes sense, thank you in advance for your help - much appreciated!
Moz Pro | | marketing-gal0 -
Crawl Errors from URL Parameter
Hello, I am having this issue within SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnosis report. There are a lot of crawl errors happening with pages associated with /login. I will see site.com/login?r=http://.... and have several duplicate content issues associated with those urls. Seeing this, I checked WMT to see if the Google crawler was showing this error as well. It wasn't. So what I ended doing was going to the robots.txt and disallowing rogerbot. It looks like this: User-agent: rogerbot Disallow:/login However, SEOmoz has crawled again and it still picking up on those URLs. Any ideas on how to fix? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | WrightIMC0 -
Why Do Links, DA and PA have no affect on this search result?
When I type 'plumbing courses' into Google, why does Able Skills with these statistics: Page Authority: 57,
Moz Pro | | MartinHof
2,752 Links from 330 Root Domains
Domain Authority: 52,
575,594 Links from 1,211 Root Domains rank below other pages with inferior statistics?0 -
How often do SEOmoz update the PA?
How often do SEOmoz index backlinks? I have got the same amount of backlinks now for nearly a month. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | SWK0 -
Does anyone know what the %5C at the end of a URL is?
I've just had a look at the crawl diagnostics and my site comes up with duplicate page content and duplicate titles. I noticed that the url all has %5C at the end which I've never seen before. Does anybody know what that means?
Moz Pro | | Greg800