: Absolute vs relative links Our site's navigation links are currently in relative form: <a href="/section"> The SEO company I mentioned in my previous question recommends we change them to

@Alves908

Theoretically, SEO wise, there should not be a difference. I've written about it some time ago nirlevy.blogspot.com/2008/07/absolute-vs-relative-urls-and-seo.html
i'll copy some of what I wrote there:


There is nothing google ever wrote
that i could find that say that
absolute URLs are better if your site
is only accessed by one domain name.

There is one exception i can think of:
if your domain is "coolstuff.com" for
example and you do use absolute URLs,
then the word "coolstuff" will appear
in your pages alot. This might be
something that may boost your ranking
with regards the the word "coolstuff".
But this is just a guess.

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@Pope3001725

According to Google both work but they recommend full URLs. From Matt Cutts:


I recommend absolute links instead of
relative links, because there's less
chance for a spider (not just Google,
but any spider) to get confused


Source: Googleguy (aka Matt Cutts) on WebmasterWorld.com (June 2, 2005)

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@Angela700

There's pros and cons to both implementations:

Absolute: Deters scrapers (since they will have to replace all base href values). Allows for better testing in production sites - not relying on missing folder heirachy etc. Less overhead for URL retrieval (debated).

Relative: Easier for development (on a staging server or local server etc) without the need of dynamic base href. Easier to transport or move the site to another (sub)domain/folder.

So while you can see there's no SEO value to be had on way or the other, one thing that is commonly agreed in SEO is that "Good URLs NEVER change", hence my (personal) preference for insisting on absolute URLs.

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@Moriarity557

Although, it depends upon the SE, for some, providing full absolute linking, would reduce the amount of processing required to index the website, but I am not sure if this method is still used currently.

However, providing absolute link, would help when the user wishes to save the content for offline reading, and then it would make it possible for him to browse back to online content from his saved offline page.

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@Gretchen104

If the URL works for you when it's relative then it will work for search engines. I don't see any benefit to absolute links for SEO. Relative links make life easier when you change your site around as you don't have to necessarily change every link (depending on how you change your site). I think you need a new SEO company.

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