See Google Index Page using Site: with slash

Using a slash with the Google Site: Lookup

[loneduchess]

We have lost a large number of pages in the Google index recently. Does anyone know why these two searches return different results? Does the slash at the end make a difference on the same URL? The slash at the end shows only 49 indexed pages while the one without shows 270?
site:http://www.example.com/
site:http://www.example.com

[edited by: tedster at 10:42 pm (utc) on May 18, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com - no real domains [/edit]

[mibrahim]

Does anyone know why these two searches return different results?

I guess it does! mine shows 2050 with the trailing slash, from which around 2000 are supplementals. Only 12 without the slash. I already have a 301 from mysite.com/*ANY* to www.mysite.com/*ANY*.

Does anyone know if I need to make another 301s from mysite.com and www.mysite.com to mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/? Would that be a reason for duplicates and thus one possible reason for losing pages?

--> Reason for editing: My .htaccess already does a 301 from www.mysite.com to www.mysite.com/

[dmje]

I also get different numbers when using the trailing slash and when I don't.

site:www.mysite.com = 763
site:www.mysite.com/ = 129

An even different results if you do this:

site:mysite.com = 829
site:mysite.com/ = 129

It appears that it makes no difference whether one uses www with the trailing slash or not as seen from my test....not sure what it means though....

My current 301 redirect in the htaccess is as follows:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite\.com [nc]
RewriteRule (.*) [mysite.com...] [R=301,L]

which directs the non www version to the www version with the trailing slash...this is been in place for quite sometime but after reading these posts I am not sure if this is correct format of the redirect.

Anyone?

[daveVk]

Without the trailing site: includes supplimentary index, with the slash site: seems to work like a regular search and only include sups if not enough regular results available.

Eg
inurl:www.mysite.com gives 277 ( non sup )
site:www.mysite.com/ gives 277 ( ditto )
site:www.mysite.com gives 22600 ( all, post googles fix )
site:www.mysite.com -site:www.mysite.com/ gives 22400 ( sups only, aprox 22600-277 )

This seems be an artifact of recent changes to operation of site: search to always? include sups