Page is a not externally linkable
M_Bison - 10:13 pm on Nov 8, 2006 (gmt 0)
It's a reasonable explanation but it just doesn't fit what I'm seeing on more than one site. Remember it's not just a canonical issue, it is a duplicate content issue too. That means if, for example, you have had a page with the same <head> as your home page, then it could be bumping your home page out of your country's index. I've seen this on my own site and when I do a search on google.com.au for the name of a large Australian company who runs many sites with TLDs - one site has duplicate titles and meta descriptions and is affected by this problem. All other sites have a unique <head> and aren't affected by this problem.
I have had a few sites affected where on top of *never* linking internally to /index.htm or similar (I've not done this on a site for 3 years I always use the domain - in fact I always use absolute links, never relative for all pages on all sites) I use htaccess to avoid this ever happening.