Linking strategy - absolute vs relative

[My_Donna]

Hi all,

Do search engines know the difference between absolute and relative links?

From what I understand, inbound links have the potential to increase your search engine ranking. What about internal (relative) links within your own website, for example Wikipedia has a gazillion relative links between their articles. Does this help Wikipedia get ranked higher?


Thanks in advance!

[donecweb]

Search engines do know the difference between absolute and relative links but the amount of credit they give to internal links is pretty low. Internal links both relative and absolute do help but not as much as inbound links (from other sites to your site). Also the higher number of links you have the less each one counts.

[SensoVision]

just wish to echo what Don have said above. From what I know all links are taken into account when calculated popularity and relevance but inbound links have much greater impact than inbound ones.
Of course it's good idea to have each page on your site accessed from the rest as it would make for people and spiders easily access your pages, but remember to keep it usable for visitors as any site is build for them isn't it?

Regarding wikipedia I think that it could have adjusted ranking or just have links from some very big sites...

[Gracia]

Let’s begin with the basics first, we need to understand what links are. There are two types of links that are into use, absolute and relative links. An Absolute link is used to define specific locations of s webpage and a relative link is used for specifying a location of a webpage within a major directory.

Example of an absolute link: < a xhref="http://www.eukhost.com/support/" mce_href="http://www.eukhost.com/support/" >Webhosting Support Information< /a>

Example of an relative link: < a xhref="../support" mce_href="../support" >Webhosting Support Information< /a>

*** Advisable to use absolute link

[donecweb]

*** Advisable to use absolute link

I can't agree that using absolute links is advisable for all sites. The reason for my statement is that some host may not have every thing set up just right and if you use PHP and use absolute links it can be seen as a vulnerability by the hosting company making absolute links with them as not advisable. Also if you have a site that you move from host to host then absolute links are more trouble to move.

[SensoVision]

good explanation, Gracia!
Generally I agree with Don, as for certain types of sites and for certain situations different type of links should be used.

Also if you have a site that you move from host to host then absolute links are more trouble to move.

in some case relative links may not solve situations good as well IMHO and even drive you int trouble if you're using cross references from one file to another(I'm talking about PHP code).

Personally when I'm writing some site using PHP I create file e.g. "settings.php" which look like this:

Code: (settings.php)

<?php
//Change settings according to your server setup
//IMPORTANT:don't use trailing slashes at the end of URLs and paths
$site_path="/home/domainexample/public_html";
$site_url="http://www.domainexample.net";

?>

where www.domainexample.net is top level of my site, and to move my script to other domain e.g. www.yoursiteurl.net
I just need to edit file to look like this:

Code: (settings.php)

<?php
//Change settings according to your server setup
//IMPORTANT:don't use trailing slashes at the end of URLs and paths
$site_path="/home/yoursiteurl/public_html";
$site_url="http://www.yoursiteurl.net";

?>

All my files include settings.php via include function and all hrefs in site contain links like this:

Code:

<?php
include_once("settings.php");

echo '< a href="'.$site_url.'index.php">Home Page</a>';

?>

This way by changing settings in one place you'll be sure that all links would be changed for new locations.