Trailing slashes in URLs: Crawl Audit check 43

Short answer: /about and /about/ look the same, but to Google they're two separate URLs. If both load the same page, you've got a duplicate. Check 43 is informational and always passes. What matters is that your site picks one form and redirects the other to it.

What Crawl Audit checks

Check 43 always passes. It notes whether the URL resolved without a redirect, or through one, to a single URL. It doesn't test the slash and no-slash versions against each other. To do that yourself, open both versions of an inner page and see whether one redirects to the other.

What Google says

From Google's post "To slash or not to slash":

• "Google treats each URL above separately (and equally)", meaning the version with a trailing slash and the one without.
• "Use a 301 redirect from the duplicate to the preferred version."
• The root is the exception: "https://example.com is equivalent to https://example.com/".

Google's current guide to duplicate URLs gives the general rule: "Pick one of those URLs as your canonical URL, and use redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL."

Which to pick

It doesn't matter, as long as it's consistent. Most platforms decide for you. The things to check:

• Both versions don't return 200 with the same content.
• Your canonical tags (check 36), sitemap and internal links all use the form you picked.

This site uses no trailing slash. /about/ answers with a permanent 308 redirect to /about, which is Next.js's default behaviour.

On your platform

• Next.js: "By default Next.js will redirect URLs with trailing slashes to their counterpart without a trailing slash." Set trailingSlash: true in next.config if you want the opposite.
• WordPress: the permalink structure in Settings › Permalinks decides the form. Open an inner page with and without the slash to confirm one redirects to the other.
• Shopify, Wix and Squarespace: the platform fixes the form. Just make sure your own links and redirects use the same one.

Sources

• Google Search Central blog, To slash or not to slash, 21 April 2010.
• Google Search Central, How to specify a canonical URL (updated 10 July 2026), checked 3 October 2026.
• Next.js, trailingSlash.