www and non www issue - 3 versions indexed!

[milow]

Hi

Google's index shows three versions of my default page:

1 [mysite.com...] (Page Rank 5)
2 [mysite.com...] (Page Rank 4)
3 [mysite.com...] (Page Rank 0)

I am worried about duplicate content here as there are small dynamic elements on the page.

In the Google FAQ on this site, you say:

"You can also ask your host to properly setup a "302, 303, 304" redirect from the nonWWW to the real WWW domain. If you use the redirect method, Google will see the redirect and understand it should only index the full www address".

I've read, though, that 302 redirects should be avoided, so I'm a little confused as to the right thing to do!

Is it okay/best to do a 301 redirect from the second and third ones to the first one?

Many thanks

[milow]

OK, having researched this a little further, the general onsensus seems to be that a 301 redirect from the non-www to the www is the safest/best thing to do about that.

What I'm having more problems finding, however, is reference to redirecting /index.asp to /

Again, consensus seems to be that when changing the name of a page within a domain, for example www.mysite.com/page1 to www.mysite.com/page2, a 301 is the best thing to do.

But are there any potential issues/problems with doing this from /index.asp to the root?

Many thanks

[asusplay]

Yes, redirecting from index.asp to root will create an endless loop. I posted about this last week, but in the end resorted to changing the index.asp page to default.asp and the doing a 301 redriect on the index.asp to the root...kinda convoluted, but it's the only way i can think of doing such a thing when you dont have access to the IIS. I admit it's open to vulnerability, but it's pretty seamless and a sensible thing to do to get rid of / avoid duplicate content penalty as a result.

[milow]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm on IIS and using ISAPI Rewrite for redirects, and the endless loop doesn't seem to be a problem.

But, I think I've narrowed down my issue further...

My index page serves about 20-30% dynamic content. /index.asp and the root are spidered at different times, and therefore have about 20-30% different content according to Google's cache. So, if I do a 301 redirect from /index.asp to the root, will this be considered as something like a doorway page by Google? I would in effect be serving (20-30%) different content to visitors than the page the visitor found in the search results.

If this is the case, is it still a good idea to do a 301 from index to the root?

[asusplay]

well my understanding is that G sees them as different pages all together and a 301 redirect is a 'page permanently moved' so once you apply the redirect G should drop the /index.asp.

The dynamic content is the problem that i found too, because G crawls and caches and compares at different times. But once the redirect is noticed then there will be nothing to compare the root to, if you know what i mean...at least thats the logical thing...and Google defies this more often than not!