"Trailing slashes hurt SEO."

"Trailing slashes hurt SEO."

No. They're just a different URL.

Here's the technical reality: to a server, /page and /page/ can be two distinct resources. Neither is "better" for ranking. The SEO problem was never the slash — it's serving the same content at both without picking one, which splits signals across two URLs.

Here's what actually happens: people read "trailing slashes cause duplicate content" and conclude the slash is cursed. Wrong lesson. Inconsistency causes the duplication. Pick a convention — with or without, doesn't matter for rank — enforce it with a 301 from the loser to the winner, and set the canonical accordingly.

One caveat that's actually true: on the root domain, example.com and example.com/ are equivalent and you can't drop that slash. Everywhere else it's your choice.

Consistency is the rule. The slash itself is innocent. (Anyone telling you one direction ranks higher is selling certainty that doesn't exist.)