site ranking different for minor URL differences?

[javahava]

Hi there,

I have a site url that ends in .com, with all of external sites linking to that URL. within our site, however, our links to our home page point to that same URL but with a slightly different ending -- .com/index.php. the link leads to the same page as the .com URL. are our internal pages "voting" (in google's mind) on a different page because of the /index.php? or does google recognize that its actually the same page, and tabulating the votes accordingly? Just curious on this front. Thanks!

Thank you!

[ciml]

If the URL returns identical content when Googlebot visits, then the URLs should be merged in Google and the backlinks (and PageRank) should be combined. If the content changes slightly between the times when Googlebot fetches those two URLs, then you get different listings.

There has been some evidence of URLs not being merged when they ought to be, but that may just be an update artifact so we'll find out over the next week or two.