Domains and Index pages

Not real sure I know how to phrase this question

[dmje]

We are on a Linux server and it is my understanding that we have to have an index page or a directory listing will be displayed when the url for the domain is typed in the browser.

Our website,www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html show the same page, so if you type in www.example.com you get the same content as if you typed in www.example.com/index.html. I know this would trigger the dupe content filter in google,but I checked google with the site command and www.example.com/index.html does not appear to be in the index...www.example.com comes up first followed by the other site pages.

My question is this: Is having both going to hurt us in anyway? Is there a way to not have an index page on a linux server and still have www.example.com/ come up when the url is typed in? or is this nothing to worry about.

[frozenpeas]

Nothing to worry about at all.

[Quadrille]

It's actually very good - the more memorable URL is coming up - that probably means that most of the links to you are to domain.com

You can assist in this - if you don't already! - by having all your internal links point to "/" or to domain.com

But either won't stop the page being listed, so need for concern

[topr8]

>> Is there a way to not have an index page on a linux server and still have www.example.com/ come up when the url is typed in?

if there wasn't an index page, how exactly would a page show when the domain name alone was typed in? (the domain name points to a folder not a file as such)

index.htm/.php/.html is generally the default page set by apache to show when the domain name is typed in (or indeed any sub-directory)... this can be changed to anything you like.

by convention it is called index, if you do not have a default index page set apache will display a directory listing - unless that feature is turned off too, which it can be and it is generally a good idea to do so.

[g1smd]

The point is, is that www.domain.com/ will return the content of the index page at THAT URL, and that is the correct operation.

Therefore there is no need to ever refer to the index page itself by its actual filename, as doing so then creates duplicate content issues.

[edited by: g1smd at 8:54 pm (utc) on July 9, 2006]

[Whitey]

We still have occurrences of links to index.htm and default.htm within our sites - despite thinking we had cleaned everything up.

Is it possible to do some kind of global search and replace on all instances of “/default.htm” and “/index.htm” with “/” across our network of sites on our Linux server?

[unni]

One of my site showing both example.com/ and example.com/index.php when i do a site: search

will it create any problem?

[g1smd]

Yes, it is duplicate content.

Work to get all links pointing to "/".

In time, the other will be dropped.

[Whitey]

Just for the record, for those that need this info, a global search and replace can be done on "index.htm" and "default.htm" to "/" - I just found out.