./ and SEO

[n0m4d]

When putting ./ or ../ to links instead of writing the whole path, does that affect SEO in any way?

[almostbob]

SEspiders are good but
consider the worst case
If the search engine misses something, hiccups, when spidering your relative links and does not record a baseref
then your hard written pages end up linked as ./mypage at google http://www.google.com/mypage.html not http://www.mysite/mypage.html
and you get KOed in your search engine ranking

Google101, the webmaster tools help screens have a long dissertation on why NOT to use relative links

[chandi786]

if you use some software which shows you, how your page looks like to search engines then you will get to know your answer. In my point of view that does not make much difference.

[OnlineMarketing]

When putting ./ or ../ to links instead of writing the whole path, does that affect SEO in any way?

It's true that "worst case scenario" Google might screw up your links. If you have a very small site with only a few links then you should play it safe and put in the full link.

However, Google counts speed. A lot. If you have a large site or a lot of links, I think the faster page (by using the abbreviated links) is more important than protecting yourself from "worst case" situations.

[canadafred]

When putting ./ or ../ to links instead of writing the whole path, does that affect SEO in any way?

My opinion on this is to keep consistent. If you use the slash once then always use it otherwise, for some strange reason, the search engine can consider a variation as pointing to a different webpages in the same way as www.mysite.com/index.htm is not considered the same as www.mysite.com/ or www.mysite.com

Now, I have a funny feeling that this is changing but haven't seen any concrete proof of this as of yet.