Wednesday, April 21, 2010
That is the question we hear often. Onward to the answers! Historically, it's common for URLs with a trailing slash to indicate a directory, and those without a trailing slash to denote a file:
https://example.com/foo/ (with trailing slash, conventionally a directory) https://example.com/foo (without trailing slash, conventionally a file)
But they certainly don't have to. Google treats each URL above separately (and equally) regardless of whether it's a file or a directory, or it contains a trailing slash or it doesn't contain a trailing slash.
Different content on slash and non-slash URLs is okay for Google, but often is less ideal for users
From a technical, search engine standpoint, it's certainly permissible for these two URL versions
to contain different content. Your users, however, may find this configuration horribly
confusing—just imagine if www.google.com/webmasters and
www.google.com/webmasters/ produced two separate experiences.
For this reason, trailing slash and non-trailing slash URLs often serve the same content. The most common case is when a site is configured with a directory structure:
https://example.com/parent-directory/child-directory/
Your site's configuration and your options
You can do a quick check on your site to see if either of the URLs matching this pattern redirects to the other:
-
https://example.com/foo/
(with trailing slash) -
https://example.com/foo
(no trailing slash)
- If only one version can be returned (that is, the other redirects to it), that's great! This behavior is beneficial because it reduces