Inktomi Resolving Subdomains Incorrectly

Inktomi Truncating Some URLs

[egomaniac]

Some urls are being listed in Inktomi results without the trailing slash.
This can present a problem if you host all your subdomains on one IP address / webhosting account.

For example, a subdirectory-subdomain page should show up in the SERPs in one of two ways:

[cars.mydomain.com...]
or
[cars.mydomain.com...]

Yet Inktomi is listing many such pages as follows:

[cars.mydomain.com...]

Now if this page was not a subdomain, it would not be a problem. For example, I have a number of pages like the following one that work fine when listed without the trailing slash:

[mydomain.com...]

But because of the way my hosting company implements subdomains (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum23/835.htm), I am having this problem. With my hosting company, I have been unable to figure out a way to get the trailing slash automatically added by the Apache webserver if it is not included in the url request. This results in a request for the page

[cars.mydomain.com...]

resolving to the page

[mydomain.com...]

... because I am running my subdomains from one hosting account using one IP address. This can cause navigation confusion for the user.

When I discovered this problem, I checked all the other major engines, and none of them have this problem.

Inktomi is actively cutting off the trailing slash, and in some cases the index.htm as well. I submitted a number of pages to Positiontech with the full url including the index.htm, and the SERPs then showed the truncated version minus the trailing slash and the index.htm page.

POSSIBLE GOOD NEWS:

I first noticed this problem a couple of weeks ago. When I checked the "Pure Inktomi" search yesterday, many sites are now showing the full URL, including my subdomain-subdirectory pages that I have been concerned about.

THE BAD NEWS:

Many sites in the "Pure Inktomi" results are still showing subdirectories without the trailing slash. Also, when I do a check over at MSN, my pages are still showing the trailing slash and index.htm to be missing (although I expect the Pure Inktomi results will propagate to MSN soon) .

This problem may be in the process of getting corrected, but I am not sure. The pages that I noticed as being "fixed" looked to be PositionTech submissions. The ones with the problems looked to be ones that Inktomi is naturally spidering (the so-called White DB).