I've been searching but haven't been able to find anything on this. I'm sure I'm just using the wrong search terms. Anyway, I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how navigation works in regards to directories.

If I have this link:

mysite.com/project

and the actual page is located:

mysite.com/project/index.html

When the link (mysite.com/project) is used, it actually navigates to the index.html page.

Here's the tricky part - whether "mysite.com/project" or "mysite.com/project/" is used, both options point to the index.html page.

I've seen elsewhere that technically speaking, these are actually two different urls and that Search Engines might see these as two completely different places. Here's the mention I'm referring to: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/a...d-smarter-404s

So my question is which is better to use "mysite.com/project" or "mysite.com/project/"

Or does it really matter? If it does matter, I guess it would make sense to keep my use of slashes consistent in the internal structure of my site, and when posting backlinks on other sites. I did the best I could to explain the question. Hope I was clear. Thanks for any suggestions.

The trailing slash indicates to the server that the requested URI is a directory name, without it it could be a file name.
If the trailing slash is already on the requested URI it saves the server a few microseconds of looking for a file with that name, then adding the slash, silently redirecting and serving the default page from the directory with that name.

All that really matters though is to be consistent.

Thanks for the explanation. I guess it makes sense to use mysite.com/project (instead of mysite.com/project/) when creating backlinks, so I think I need to change my internal site linking because I use slashes in the urls internally.