Q: My new platform adds (or removes) trailing slashes — does that one little slash actually matter?

Q: My new platform adds (or removes) trailing slashes — does that one little slash actually matter?

It feels trivial, but yes, it genuinely matters — good catch.

Short answer: /page and /page/ are two different URLs to a server. Pick one form and 301 the other.

Long answer: to a browser they look the same, but technically they're distinct URLs that can both return 200 — instant duplicate content, split signals, and confused canonicals. Migrations are where this sneaks in, because the new stack often has the opposite default from the old one. If you're not consistent, half your links resolve one way and half the other.

There's no SEO winner between with-slash and without — consistency is the whole game.

Next step: choose one convention site-wide, set canonicals to match, and add a 301 from the non-preferred form to the preferred one. Then crawl and confirm no URL returns 200 in both forms.