Links and a 301 redirect from / to index.jsp

Is it okay to do a 301 redirect from / to index instead of the other way?

[eddytom]

We run a news site that 301's from www.sitename.com/ to www.example.com/index.jsp. We have an equal amount of links coming in to both urls. Throughout our site we link to www.example.com/index.jsp. Will this work the same as redirecting from www.example.com/index.jsp to www.example.com/, or should we change the redirect from www.example.com/index.jsp to www.sitename.com/. We originally insituted the redirect 2 months ago, but yahoo is showing thousands of different backlinks to both urls. We definately feel we are being harmed by this but cannot get a positive answer on what we should do.

Thanks for any help.

[edited by: tedster at 1:44 am (utc) on Oct. 14, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[tedster]

There are definitely some down sides to it. On its own, maybe not too bad, but it can easily compound any other problem that ever comes up. I've seen the Google index get so "confused" that people who put a domain in the search box don't get that domain at #1 -- and never forget that a lot of people do use the search box like an address bar.

Here's another one. If you ever migrate away from the jsp platform, then your Home Page will get a whole new url (and a potential sandbox effect).

The best practice is to resolve the domain name directly. If for some reason you find you cannot do that right now, I would strongly suggest a 302 and not a 301. That way it is the domain root that gets indexed, rather than an interior url.

[jd01]

I would strongly suggest a 302 and not a 301

I think you mean a 307 'temporary' --- technically, 302 is 'undefined'

Justin

[g1smd]

Firstly, the redirect in either direction helps in one respect: it avoids having two active "200 OK" URLs for the same content.

However, Tedster mentions one downside: it's not future proof. Google also seems to prefer listing the shorter URL.

So, I would take the redirect off for a few weeks, change all your internal links to point to / and leave the redirect off for a few weeks after doing that, and then put the redirect back but pointing in the other direction.