Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How important is the file extension in the URL for images?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How important is the file extension in the URL for images?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    11
    10430
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • dsbud
      dsbud last edited by

      I know that descriptive image file names are important for SEO. But how important is it to include .png, .jpg, .gif (or whatever file extension) in the url path? i.e. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever vs. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever.jpg

      Furthermore, since you can set the filename in the Content-Disposition response header, is there any need to include the descriptive filename in the URL path?

      Since I'm pulling most of our images from a database, it'd be much simpler to not care about simulating a filename, and just reference an image id in my templates.

      Example:

      1. Browser requests GET /images/123456
      2. Server responds with image setting both Content-Disposition, and Link (canonical) headers

      Content-Disposition: inline; filename="golden-retriever"
      Link: <https: 123456="" example.com="" images="">; rel="canonical"</https:>

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • willcritchlow
        willcritchlow @dsbud last edited by

        In theory, there should be no difference - the canonical header should mean that Google treats the inclusion of /images/123456 as exactly the same as including /images/golden-retriever.

        It is slightly messier so I think that if it was easy, I'd go down the route of only ever using the /golden-retriever version - but if that's difficult, this is theoretically the same so should be fine.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • dsbud
          dsbud @willcritchlow last edited by

          @Will Thank you so much for this response. Very helpful.

          "If you can't always refer to the image by its keyword-rich filename"...

          If I'm already including the canonical link header on the image, and am able to serve from both /images/123456 and /images/golden-retriever (canonical), is there any benefit to referencing the canonical over the other in my image tags?

          willcritchlow 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • willcritchlow
            willcritchlow last edited by

            Hi James. I've responded with what I believe is a correct answer to MarathonRunner's question. There are a few inaccuracies in your responses to this thread - as pointed out by others below - please can you target your future responses to areas where you are confident that you are correct and helpful? Many thanks.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • willcritchlow
              willcritchlow last edited by

              @MarathonRunner - you are correct in your inline responses - it's totally valid to serve an image (or other filetype) without an extension, with its type identified by the Content-Type. Sorry that you've had a less-than-helpful experience here so far.

              To answer your original questions:

              1. From an SEO perspective, there is no need that I know of for your images to have a file extension - the content type should be fine
              2. However - I have no reason to think that a filename in the Content-Disposition header will be recognised as a ranking signal - what you are describing is a rare use-case and I haven't seen any evidence that it would be recognised by the search engines as being the "real" filename

              If you can't always refer to the image by its keyword-rich filename, then could you:

              • Serve it as you propose (though without the Content-Disposition filename)
              • Serve a rel="canonical" link to a keyword-rich filename (https://example.com/images/golden-retriever in your example)
              • Also serve the image on that URL

              This only helps if you are able to serve the image on the /images/golden-retriever path, but need to have it available at /images/123456 for inclusion in your own HTML templates.

              I hope that helps.

              dsbud 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
              • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                If you really did your research you would have noticed the header image is not using an extension.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • dsbud
                  dsbud last edited by

                  Again, you're mistaken. The Content-Type response header tells the browser what type of file the resource is (mime type). This is _completely different _from the file extension in URL paths.

                  In fact, on the web all the file extensions are faked through the URL path. For example, this page's URL path is:

                  https://moz.com/community/q/how-important-is-the-file-extension-in-the-url-for-images

                  It's not

                  https://moz.com/community/q/how-important-is-the-file-extension-in-the-url-for-images.html

                  How does the browser know the the page is an html doc? Because of the Content-Type response header. The faked "extension" in the URL path, is unnecessary.

                  You can view http response headers for any URL using this tool.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                  • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                    Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/brutal-poll-shows-most-people-214647063.html Good luck!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                      Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                      Do you need a new keyboard?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                        Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                        @James Wolff: I'm really hoping you're being sarcastic here. As it's totally fine to serve it without the extension. There are many more ways for a crawler to understand what type a file is. Including what @MarathonRunner is talking about here.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                        • dsbud
                          dsbud last edited by

                          This isn't accurate. File extension (in the url path) is not the same as the **Content-Type **response header. Browsers respect the response header Content-Type over whatever extension I use in the path.

                          Example: try serving a file /golden-retriever.png with a content type of image/jpeg. Your browser will understand the file as a .jpg. If you attempt to save, your browser will correct to golden-retriever.jpg.

                          You can route URLs however you want.

                          Additionally, I'm not aware of any way browsers "leverage cache by content type". Browsers handle cache by the etag/expires header.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • 1 / 1
                          • First post
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          Browse Questions

                          Explore more categories

                          • Moz Tools

                            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                          • SEO Tactics

                            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                          • Community

                            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                          • Digital Marketing

                            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                          • Research & Trends

                            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                          • Support

                            Connect on product support and feature requests.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • 94501

                            Sanity Check: NoIndexing a Boatload of URLs

                            Hi, I'm working with a Shopify site that has about 10x more URLs in Google's index than it really ought to. This equals thousands of urls bloating the index. Shopify makes it super easy to make endless new collections of products, where none of the new collections has any new content... just a new mix of products. Over time, this makes for a ton of duplicate content. My response, aside from making other new/unique content, is to select some choice collections with KW/topic opportunities in organic and add unique content to those pages. At the same time, noindexing the other 90% of excess collections pages. The thing is there's evidently no method that I could find of just uploading a list of urls to Shopify to tag noindex. And, it's too time consuming to do this one url at a time, so I wrote a little script to add a noindex tag (not nofollow) to pages that share various identical title tags, since many of them do. This saves some time, but I have to be careful to not inadvertently noindex a page I want to keep. Here are my questions: Is this what you would do? To me it seems a little crazy that I have to do this by title tag, although faster than one at a time. Would you follow it up with a deindex request (one url at a time) with Google or just let Google figure it out over time? Are there any potential negative side effects from noindexing 90% of what Google is already aware of? Any additional ideas? Thanks! Best... Mike

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
                            0
                          • Atlanta-SMO

                            Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's

                            An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO
                            0
                          • AndySalmons

                            Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?

                            I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndySalmons
                            0
                          • WebServiceConsulting.com

                            What is the point of having images clickable loading to their own page?

                            Hello, Noticed a lot of sites, usually wordpress (seems to be the default) have the images in their posts clickable that load to their own page, showing just the image, usually a .jpg page. I know these pages seem to be easily indexed into google image search and can drive traffic to those specific pages... My questions are... 1. What is the point of driving traffic to a page that is just the image, there are no links to other pages, no ads, nothing... 2. can you redirect these .jpg pages to the actual post page? I ask because on google image search, there are 3 links to click (website, image link, image page), when you click to view the image, it loads the .jpg page, why not have that .jpg redirect to the real content page that has ads and also has other links. Is this white-hat? 3. Do these pages with just images have any negative effect on optimization since they are just images, no content? 4. Can you monetize these .jpg pages? 5. What is the best practice? I understand there is value in traffic, but what is the point of image traffic if I can't monetize those pages?

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com
                            0
                          • ukss1984

                            URL Error or Penguin Penalty?

                            I am currently having a major panic as our website www.uksoccershop.com has been largely dropped from Google. We have not made any changes recently and I am not sure why this is happening, but having heard all sorts of horror stories of penguin update, I am fearing the worst. If you google "uksoccershop" you will see that the homepage does not rank. We previously ranked in the top 3 for "football shirts" but now we don't, although on page 2, 3 and 4 you will see one of our category pages ranking (this didn't used to happen). Some rankings are intact, but many have disappeared completely and in some cases been replaced by other pages on our site. I should point out our existing rankings have been consistently there for 5-6 years until today. I logged into webmaster tools and thankfully there is no warning message from Google about spam, etc, but what we do have is 35,000 URL errors for pages which are accessible. An example of this is: | URL: | http://www.uksoccershop.com/categories/5_295_327.html | | Error details In Sitemaps Linked from Last crawled: 6/20/12First detected: 6/15/12Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. Is it possible this is the cause of the issue (we are not currently sure why the URL's are being blocked) and if so, how severe is it and how recoverable?If that is unlikely to cause the issue, what would you recommend our next move is?All help is REALLY REALLY appreciated 🙂

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss1984
                            0
                          • salvyy

                            Exact keyword URL or not?

                            Hi all, I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks. Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')? I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")? I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help. All best, Sal

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy
                            0
                          • digisavvy

                            There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?

                            Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy
                            0
                          • pepsimoz

                            Htaccess Redirect with %C2%A0 in URL

                            Below is my setup for redirects in .htaccess file in my root word press installation. The www to non-www works well, so no problems there Other page redirects work well, too (example: redirect 301 /some-page/ http://mysite.com/another-page/ (I didn't post those because I have a few too many : ) So here it goes... RewriteEngine On
                            RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.com$ [NC]
                            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L] BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
                            RewriteBase /
                            RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
                            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                            RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress redirect 301 /archives/10-college- majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%20majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ I'm having a problem with the last 301 redirect: redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/ not working... As you can see I've tried using other varations of the "space" but no go. I also used a redirect in cPanel's Redirect screen; testing all the possible options + wildcard I've also tried this: http://serverfault.com/questions/201829/using-special-characters-in-apache-mod-rewrite-rule (perhaps unsuccessfully, because it caused a 500 server error and it's a different situation in my case) I also saw something here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3908682.htm but I don't know if it works and how I would implement that + do so without compromising ALL other redirects. Note: the URL displays with a space in the address bar of all major web browsers: http://mysite.com/10-college- majors/  and goes to a 404 page I have a goregous page / PR6 / high authority site linking to the URL on my site, but they copied the URL with a space somehow. I contacted the person responsible for the website and he claims it works fine (aka he didn't check it). Is there a clean way to redirect ONLY this problematic URL without compromising other redirects, etc? Any ideas would be great. I'll respond with progress. Thanks in advance. UPDATE the   redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ``` http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/ Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ``` http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pepsimoz
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          • Digital Marketers
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.