Index with or without the "/" at domains end

My site is indexed by google as

http://www.mysite.com/

My site is indexed by yahoo as

http://www.mysite.com (no slash)

SO MY QUESTION IS DO I TRADE LINKS as www.mysite.com or www.mysite.com/

or does it make a difference in the serps?

thanks for your help

 

It won't effect it either way.

 

Adding the trailing / is more technically correct, but the web server should do a 301 redirect for you and it should (!) not matter.

 

I tend to agree it is interesting though now if you look at google's search results google ads the / to the end of the displayed link like domain.com/

 

Coding on the web would be a whole lot cleaner if browser makers weren't so enthusiastic about "helping out" pages written badly, and server makers on helping URLs called incorrectly.

A domain name specifies a domain. Duh. It does not specify a web page, not any page.

A domain, say nowhere.com, can comprise an ftp server, a web server, even a gopher server.

Within a protocol type, such as HTTP (web pages), which are served from some particular port of the server corresponding to that type, there are individual resources (typically files, or, in this case, more particularly web-page files). The location of a resource within a domain/port specification, is given by the familiar directory/filespec pattern.

The domain and the location within the domain are two distinct, separate elements of a resource's Uniform Resource Locator (URI) "address".

The simplest possible directory portion of an internal address is the root directory, conventionally specified by a single slash. That doesn't specify a file either; it just specifies a particular directory. The convention in directory/filespec naming is that the filespec is all of what comes after the last directory slash. Thus, in--

/mystuff/details/junque​

--the junque, even though it lacks any type-indicating extension, will be perceived as a filename.

Modern servers have adopted a more or less universal practice to "help" and "simplify" certain URLs: if the URL specifies a particular directory, but does not specify any file at all within that directory, the server serves either the first it finds in an internal list of special page names, or--if it finds none on that list--either a directory listing or a statement that the directory is not allowed for viewing (depending on server settings).

The list usually includes, in roughly this order, index.htm, index.html, index.shtml, index.php, and maybe I've overlooked one or two.

That list-search is a favor the server does for "lazy" clients. It is not a real part of URI specifying. And that favor has caused and continues to cause endless, and needless, confusion.

Worse, though, and the point here, is that servers also "help" by assuming that a call to a bare domain/port (the port is implied as the standard for the protocol type, though you can specify a nonstandard port in a URL) must be a call to the root directory, and so automatically (and, unless you are packet-monitoring, invisibly) send a 301-Redirect to the root.

So, if you call--

http://www.nowhere.com​

--what happens is, first, the server sends back a 301-Redirect specifying--

http://www.nowhere.com/​

--as the correct and permanent location; then, when your browser requests that URL, the server obligingly looks in the root directory till it finds--and serves--index.shtml or whatever your index page is.

If servers were less obliging, there would be a very much better general understanding of these matters.

 

Very well-written Eric ... I agree that sometimes being "forgiving" can encourage bad habits as you outlined.