To slash or not to slash

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

That is the question we hear often. Onward to the answers! Historically, it’s common for URLs with
a trailing slash to indicate a directory, and those without a trailing slash to denote a file:

But they certainly don’t have to. Google treats each URL above separately (and equally) regardless
of whether it’s a file or a directory, or it contains a trailing slash or it doesn’t contain a
trailing slash.

Different content on slash and non-slash URLs is okay for Google, but often is less ideal for users

From a technical, search engine standpoint, it’s certainly permissible for these two URL versions
to contain different content. Your users, however, may find this configuration horribly
confusing—just imagine if www.google.com/webmasters and
www.google.com/webmasters/ produced two separate experiences.

For this reason, trailing slash and non-trailing slash URLs often serve the same content. The most
common case is when a site is configured with a directory structure:

Your site’s configuration and your options

You can do a quick check on your site to see if either of the URLs matching this pattern
redirects to the other:

1. https://example.com/foo/
   
   (with trailing slash)
2. https://example.com/foo
   
   (no trailing slash)

• If only one version can be returned (that is, the other redirects to it), that’s great! This
  behavior is beneficial because it reduces
  duplicate content. In the
  particular case of redirects to trailing slash URLs, our search results will likely show the
  version of the URL with the
  200 response code
  (most often the trailing slash URL)—regardless of whether the redirect was a
  301 or 302.
• If both slash and non-trailing-slash versions contain the same content and each returns
  200, you can:
  • Consider changing this behavior (more info below) to reduce duplicate content and improve
    crawl efficiency.
  • Leave it as-is. Many sites have duplicate content. Our indexing process often handles this
    case for webmasters and users. While it’s not totally optimal behavior, it’s perfectly
    legitimate and a-okay. 🙂
  • Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, https://example.com is
    equivalent to https://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re Chuck
    Norris.

Steps for serving only one URL version

What if your site serves duplicate content on these two URLs:

Meaning that both URLs return 200 (neither has a redirect or contains
rel="canonical" link tag
), and you want to change the situation?

1. Choose one URL as the preferred version. If your site has a directory structure, it’s more
   conventional to use a trailing slash with your directory URLs (for example,
   example.com/directory/ rather than example.com/directory), but you can
   choose whichever you like.
2. Be consistent with the preferred version. Use it in your internal links. If you have a
   sitemap, include the preferred version
   (and don’t include the duplicate URL).
3. Use a 301 redirect from the duplicate to the preferred version. If that’s not
   possible, the rel="canonical" link tag is a strong option.
   rel="canonical" works similarly to a 301 for Google’s indexing
   purposes, and other major search engines as well.
4. Test your 301 configuration through
   Fetch as Googlebot
   in Webmaster Tools.
   Make sure your URLs, https://example.com/foo/ and
   https://example.com/foo, are behaving as expected. The preferred version should
   return a 200 status code. The duplicate URL should 301 redirect to the
   preferred URL.
5. Check for
   Crawl errors
   in Webmaster Tools, and, if possible, your webserver logs as a quick check that the
   301 redirects are implemented.
6. Profit! (just kidding) But you can bask in the sunshine of your efficient server configuration,
   warmed by the knowledge that your site is better optimized.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead