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Sims2060225

: Using ending .html for URL re-write? For re-writing URLs to generate SEO friendly pretty URLs, it was usually recommended to use the ending extension (normally .html), as without the extension,

@Sims2060225

Posted in: #Html #Seo #Url #UrlRewriting

For re-writing URLs to generate SEO friendly pretty URLs, it was usually recommended to use the ending extension (normally .html), as without the extension, the URL seems to be incomplete. Probably, because a webpage should be similar to a file (as actually is) rather than folder. And it was the method used by almost all websites.

However, I have been recently noticed that major content websites have removed the html extension from the end of URL. This is the case of stackexchange projects too.

Is it beneficial to remove the html extension? Or it has been convinced that it is useless and it is prettier to have URL without extension?

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@Ogunnowo487

I don't think you should mix up term such as "folder" and "file" with web addresses (URIs to be more correct). In other words, web pages ending width .html are not (necessarily) files and ending without them are (most likely) not folders.

Also you could have addresses ending with .php, .jsp, .aspx or .mycustomextension. It doesn't matter to the visitor of your website.

As such I personally find any extension part redundant and obfuscating the actual meaning of the particular URI.

On the other hand a URI can represent a physical file on a web server. In such case .html is there for a reason. For dynamic pages extensionless URIs are more user (and SEO I think) friendly.

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@Angela700

The only benefit to keep it is for consistency (you have an large number of existing URLs that you don't want to have to add an unnecessary 301 redirect to).

The only reason to remove it is for flexibility - e.g. What happens if you want to move your site to .aspx, or .php, or .shtml?

There's NO SEO benefit to removing the filetype extension. It does make URLs (slightly) shorter, and less imposing to web n00bs, but that's about it.

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