Base Href - Usage along with advantages and dis advantages

[zco_seo]

Hi Friends,

I like to add base href in all my web inner pages.

My doubts is which method is better to use. The details are given below,

<base href="root domain">

or

<base href="root domain/inner pages">

Research URLs:
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_base.asp
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1889076/is-it-recommended-to-use-the-base-html-tag

Please share advantages and dis advantages by using this method.

Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

Honestly, I wouldn't use base href's to fix 404s in links - I'd fix the links. It depends on the scope, I guess. If the pages are dynamic or we're talking about a few dozen, fixing the links should be pretty easy. If you have thousands of static pages, then that's a bit different, but then you'd have to edit the base tag across all those pages, anyway. I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario where fixing the links is much more difficult than putting in the base tags, but it's hard to give specific advice without the details.

[zco_seo]

Thanks for your reply.  We need to fix some 404 URLS reported from Google Webmaster tools.

So which method is better to use in all web pages.

[Dr-Pete]

I don't see it used nearly as much as it used to be, and Google's not always very consistent about interpreting it from an SEO standpoint. So, for example, while <base...>works fine for things like relative image URLs, stylesheets, etc., I wouldn't rely on it for things like the canonical tag (I'd stick to absolute URLs there).</base...>

It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, though. What are your goals, or what problem are you trying to solve? Are we talking about a site with dozens of pages or thousands?