Question about 301 redirect

[suzanne]

I am working on a site that has duplicate listings of URL's because of their file structure. Each new section of the site (along with the home page) has a main "index.htm" page that can be accessed by using either of the two URL's below:

www.example.com/folder/subfolder

-or-

www.example.com/folder/subfolder/index.htm

Can I use a 301 redirect on the index.htm URL to make sure all visitors (including spiders) only access one page? I've been told 2 different things -- one source says yes, this is the right approach. The other says it will create an endless loop.

Also, if I can use a 301 redirect, *all* Web site visitors (including spiders) will be redirected, correct?

Any guidance that can be provided would be great.

Thanks.

Suzanne

[edited by: pageoneresults at 11:39 pm (utc) on May 19, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified URI References [/edit]

[mcmrob]

The description of the issue is confusing me. I'm not entirely sure what it is that you want to do, and why you want to do it. Judging from the amount of replies 3 days after you posted this question, I'd say it's possible that I'm not the only one puzzled about your question.

Can you give me a clearer and perhaps more detailed description?

[Span]

Suzanne, I don't think anyone is using 301s for that. Just make sure all your links point to either:
/folder/subfolder/
or
/folder/subfolder/index.htm.
Never use both. That is what must have caused the duplicate pages.

[suzanne]

Sorry for the confusion. I noticed this issue when reviewing the site analytics. The reporting is based off the URL -- and it is reporting two different sets of data for the same page. The reason for this is as follows:

Incoming URL's point to the folder path for a main landing page, as this is the pathway that's been spidered by the search engines. For example:

www.example.com/category/product

However, *internal* links within the site itself point to the "index.htm" page which is essentially the same page. The URL for this is:

www.example.com/category/product/index.htm

My SEO rep is advising me I need to implement a 301 redirect to ensure all traffic lands on the same page URL. But my technical guy is telling me this will create an infinite loop as they are the same page. I don't know what approach is appropriate.

I am probably not doing the greatest job describing this because this is not my area of expertise. If anyone out there can shed some light on this, that'd be great.

[mcmrob]

I understand now, thanks. Span obviously understood right away. And I agree with what he said. You'll have to make sure that all internal links are linking to www.example.com/category/product instead of www.example.com/category/product/index.htm. If you're using a CMS which automatically creates links to www.example.com/category/product/index.html, you'll have to dig into the script's source code and manually alter it (or have someone else do that for you).

Are you using Urchin for statistics?

[katieray]

Is this even a problem?

All of my sites are like this, you can get to the home page by .com alone or .com/index.html.

I'm not seeing how this is two different pages...Does the search engines see two different pages or is this just a problem when looking at stats?

I'm sooo confused....geeze, five years in this business and I still feel like a newbie....

[Span]

katieray,

yes, it could be a problem. Not only can search engines see "/" and "index.html" as two different pages, list those pages twice, split your pagerank and punish you with lower rankings for having duplicate content - those pages can in fact very well be two completely different files.

Depending on how you configured your server, "/" can be "index.php" and have other content than "index.html".

If they are different, there's no problem. But when robots follow links to "/" and also follow links to "index.html" and those pages have the same content (because it actually is the same file) you could have two pages with the same content. Hence the duplicate listing.

Bots can't see if "/" and "index.html" are the same file. That's why it's important to always link to "/" or "index.html" and never use both.

Does that make sense?

[suzanne]

Two more quick questions:

I've seen 301 redirect used to send traffic from example.com to www.example.com. Is this a valid use of 301 redirect, and if so -- how does this differ technically from the scenarios described in this thread with the index.htm pages?

Also, if someone did implement a 301 redirect on example.com/folder/index.htm to point to example.com/folder/ would there be any negative consequences, or is this really just not the normal type of use for a 301 redirect?

Thanks for your time.

Suzanne

[Philosopher]

Redirecting from example.com to www.example.com is very common and HIGHLY recommended.

This is a bit different than using it for an internal redirect because generally, your internal links can be controlled by you. You can normalize the linking to your internal pages and do away with the need for a 301 on your internal pages.

Redirecting from example.com to www.example.com is used to fix how other people link to your site. You have no real control over that so the best fix is to implement a redirect. Also, example.com and www.example.com are actually two different websites. Most hosting providers merge them into the same site, but in reality, the two different URLs could have completely different content and even be on separate servers.