As many might notice many pages are indexed by Google in the following form:
http://www.site.com/level1/level2/level3
and consideres the next a different page:
http://www.site.com/level1/level2/level3/
And a sample has been posted on Matt Cutts' blog pointing to this Google search of hit own site :) ! This is 13th September 2007. This issue might be (have been) addressed by Google.
Yahoo! has no problem as it strips the trailing slash by default. If you want to fix this for Google read on.
This fix will add a slash to all paths where no extension is found!
#-- Fix not ending in /
#Check if does no end in slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [^\/]$
#Next line checks for extensions in the last segment /*[end]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.([a-z0-9]+)$
#If it has no extension 301 to the slash version
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ \/$1\/ [R=301,L]
This fix will remove the trailing slash from all paths where it is found!
#-- Slash ending /
#Check if does no end in slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [\/]$
#Slash the slash and 301 to the non-slash version
RewriteRule ^(.*)[\/]$ \/$1 [R=301,L]
Hope this helps you but make sure your implmentations do not make paths considered as files with no extension as this might break your sites. Other .htaccess rules migh be overridden by this is you rely on any of the slahs non-slash forms of URL. Caution!
