Web Link format. With or without .html suffix

Question

On our company website most links are in the form:

http://www.example.com/contact.html

Is it a better idea to have

http://www.example.com/contact

Or does it not matter. I got thinking because when I was submitting a form at google Adsense it refused to let me have a "." in the sub-page link modifier (see below "Path" box).

Thoughts?

Answer 1

Or does it not matter.

It most probably does not matter. There is no direct SEO benefit to dropping the .html suffix on the URL. In fact, changing the URL in any way might even see a marginal/temporary drop in rankings (maybe).

The only reason to remove the "extension" on URLs is to possibly make it more "user friendly" and a little bit shorter. Easier for users to remember and type. Looks a little neater when links are published. Possibly improve click-through rates in the SERPs (although that's debatable for such a minor change).

If you had a technology specific extension like .php or .asp then it can be beneficial to remove this technology "flag", but .html is already generic and not technology specific. In fact, there has been a bit of a trend in recent years to move back to a .html extension.

when I was submitting a form at google Adsense it refused to let me have a "." in the sub-page link modifier

This is probably because you are entering the wrong type of information in this form field. Having dots in URLs, particularly the .html extension is perfectly "normal".

Answer 2

The path URL is not real URL address, it's dummy URL address, which made for marketing purpose, so user can understand your ads in better way and you get more clicks.

For example this URL is very buggy for ads www.example.poduct/id/2521.aspx

What if you can display below URL in your ad campaign, behind your actual URL.

www.example.com/Mens_Shoes/Outdoor

It's look great then above URL. And you will get more clicks.

So the path is not real and that's why they might not allowed to use dot .(Sorry I have never tried like that) . The actual path or your landing page URL (ln this example www.example.com/contact/) should be given in final URL textbox, so whenever anybody click on your ads then that final URL will be open on their browser.

Here is more details about paths in adwords ads.

Answer 3

Add this to your .htaccess file in the main directory.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]

After this time you can access your html files with only names. You don't need to add ".html" extension. There is an important thing. If you enter filename.html via browser then you get 404 error. Becouse server trying to find filename.html.html file. Don't forget this.