lucy24 - 9:06 pm on Dec 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

Is there any distinction between mechanical redirects and true redirects? (Sorry, I don't know the technical terms.) Like this:

If a user asks for

www.example.com/directory

and the site's preferred nameform is example.com, then getting them to

example.com/directory/

is two separate 301 redirects. (I just verified this in a neighboring forum with Live Headers.) And vice versa of course if the preferred name is with-www. Many site owners probably don't even realize that there are redirects involved. Plus the final rewrite that secretly appends "index.html" or whatever the filename is.

For g### purposes, does that "count" just as much as going from

example.com/directory/

to

example.com/otherplace/newname/

(what I would call a true redirect)?