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Yes
Feel free to try it. Take this post for example. Copy the URL, then add a hashtag and some characters after it. You will return to this exact same post. The hashtag offers a tracking ability but otherwise does not impact the actual URL.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-do-search-engines-treat-urls-that-end-in-hashtags#sgdgfsdf
Exactly!
Let's use three examples involving product reviews of the latest James Bond spy watch.
1 - A product review site which offers 20 affiliate links to various sites visitors can go to and purchase the watch being reviewed. The site owner earns an affiliate fee from all of the sites so he/she does not care which site is used to make the purchase.
2. A product review which offers 1 affiliate link. The site owner likely chose this link because it allows them to earn the highest commission.
3. A product review page which offers the best ?4 links. The site owner shares he searches many sites and provides the best offers for visitors. He compares the affiliate sites and mentions why each link was selected (i.e. fastest shipping, best price, best return policy, etc). He also has an understanding with the seller that if there are any customer service issues then his site will pull the links to the "bad" site. In this case, the site owner is acting as a customer advocate.
If you wanted to buy a product, which page would you find most helpful? A sea of 20 links to random sites offering the products so you can try to figure out the best price and other factors which are important? Or the one link which you assume has a deal with the site owner? Or the last option which seems authentic and the site owner is genuinely helpful?
Thank you William. Somehow I missed it during my review of the source code.
As the others suggested, there are too many factors involved. The major factors are the size of your site and it's navigation. Sometimes a site will offer a calendar that provides 3 years of dates. If the navigation is not set up properly a crawler can get lost in the calendar. Every day on a calendar can offer daily view, weekly view, monthly view, birthdays, etc. Calendar issues are just one example of how a crawler can get "stuck" on a website.
The short answer is, it does not matter.
The recommendation I would make is to use what some people refer to as "technology-proof" URLs. Drop the file extension. Why?
it looks cleaner and nicer to users
it makes it a bit harder (more work) for someone who wants to hack your site as they are unsure of your page's language
it gives you the flexibility to change technologies without requiring a new URL (from html to php for example)
The only difference between your URLs then would be the trailing slash. It is a matter of personal preference but I add the trailing slash to indicate a folder, and no slash to indicate it is a file.
Matt Cutts has a couple videos on URLs and file names which you may enjoy:
The algorithms used for the various ccTLDs like Google.de are not the same as .com. For example, Panda has fully been implemented for .com.
I would highly advise adjusting any site that has been penalized or otherwise seen ranking issues in Google.com. The other Google updates will be updated eventually.