Main page 301 redirect to sub folder is not working right

very interesting 301 redirect problem

[colombo]

Hi Guys,
I have a very interesting issue today.

<snip>

[on my site] there is a 301 redirect from example.com/ to : http://example.com/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html

that 301 redirect made 4 months ago.

if you go to google.co.il and search for [my domain name] you will see that the first result is "example.com/" and not the new url "example.com/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html"

if you check out the cached page for example.com/ you will see the right content of "example.com/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html" which is very odd.

if you will search for "example.com/home/0,7340,L-8,00.html" you will see that google don't know about this page.

It looks very odd to me, when i checked it with live http headers every thing looks fine , normal 301 redirect.

It looks like google ignore the 301 redirect and it see example.com/home/ as the main page.

Any suggestions what may cause it ?

[edited by: jdMorgan at 7:50 pm (utc) on April 5, 2009]
[edit reason] No URLs. Please see Terms of service. [/edit]

[g1smd]

You should never redirect your root domain URL (domain name followed by slash) to a deep internal page.

Google prefers to list the shorter one.

If you need to show the content of that long URL as if it were the index page, then use a rewrite and NOT a redirect, or better yet, set that path as the DirectoryIndex.

[colombo]

Thanks for your reply!
it use 301 rewrite, this is what i get when i checked with live http headers : HTTP/1.x 301 Moved Permanently

[g1smd]

*** it use 301 rewrite ***

No. You are using a 301 redirect.

Don't use a redirect. Use a rewrite.

A rewrite is not a 301 redirect.

They are very different things.