> Hi Kathy
> The trailing slash does not make a difference on the domain name
> itself. That's the easy part.

> Everything else is much harder.

> www.domain.comvs domain.com: Technically, those are two different
> host names. It might as well bewww.domain.comvs just.bananas.edu.
> Technically, you could have different things online on those two host
> names. From the name alone, it is not possible to know that they are
> the same, you can only do it from the content.

> Similarly,www.domain.com/folder/default.htmis different thanwww.domain.com/folder/(and alsowww.domain.com/folder). Those are
> all different URLs which could, theoretically, have different content.
> The names are unique, even though the server itself might be treating
> them as the same thing.

> You might be called "Kathy", but your friends might call you "Kat". To
> someone who does not know you, the names "Kathy" and "Kat" are unique
> and could be for different people. Even the address might not give it
> away, if you had both names listed in the phone book. Smart people
> might guess and assume that it's only one "physical" person, but is
> that really something you can do with certainty? What if you're wrong?
> The only safe bet is to assume that the names are for different
> people.

> Now, the real question is, what happens after Google recognizes that
> it might be the same. Imagine the situation where you have a dynamic
> element on your site, even just something as simple as the date/time
> being displayed. The pages pulled from the different host names are
> not fully identical. Do you see how this can turn into something
> complicated? It's like someone meeting you as Kat in the Gym first and
> then later meeting Kathy in a business meeting. Hmm, looks similar...
> is it identical? :-)

> John