Question about homepage url format

[bostonseo]

I am very inexperienced webmaster - I just wanted to get that out the way :)

I have a website that I created about a year and a half ago - when I type in my domain manually
www.mywebsite.com browsers seem to add a / at the end of the domain so it actually displays
www.mywebsite.com/ why does it do that? Is that normal or bad?

The other question I have is that it appears there is also a file called www.mywebsite.com/Index.html - file is exactly the same as www.mywebsite.com/ Is it bad to have this /Index.html file? I don't want to annoy Google by having unnecessary files.

Thanks for any explanation you can add.

[mack]

Yes this is very normal. It is something that is done by your web browser and will happen with all sites. For example type www.webmasterworld.com in the address bar and it will add the "/" to the end.

Mack.

[bostonseo]

Thanks. What about having this Index.html file? Is that a bad thing? Could I be penalized by Google for
having it? Heck I don't even think I created it :)

[mack]

The index file is what becomes the main page for a directory. It all depends on how your server is configured as to what page is allowed to be an index file, for example index.htm, default.htm or home.htm

You need to have an index file in order for the server to return a page. The concept to get to grips with is, www.example.com is a url, but it is not a page. The server needs to be configured to return the index file from the domain when a user types the address in their web browser. The page is the true location, the domain is just a way of getting there.

Mack.