I need some guidance on fixing a canonical issue

[erint]

Hi, long time reader and this site may have saved us.

We have had problems since 10/19. I figured out that in a server move redirects weren't done.

We are getting www.oursite.com indexed and www.oursite.com/index.html

On a 2008 server should we just 301 redirect www.oursite.com/index.html to www.oursite.com and that is it? Do I have to send anything to googe?

I did see in webmaster tools reference to / as a page. Is that another canonical issue?

Thanks so much!

[Planet13]

From what I can tell, it seems that most of the posters on this site feature this format for the home page:

www.oursite.com/

I will defer to other people to chip in.

[tedster]

Yes - all you need is the 301 redirect and googlebot will see that when it crawls.

"/" is just the way to say "root" - it's not a canonical problem in and of itself.

[scottsonline]

Does this really effect rankings that much?
After seeing this and other posts I checked and we had the main page and index.html showing up both with a PR of 6. Think it's a big deal?

We did the redirect.

[tedster]

It doesn't make a difference as often as it used to. Google can sometimes (but not always) catch the common home page duplicates and combine the data.

That's in some cases. In others cases, both URLs remain indexed separately and that messes with the way link equity gets added up and circulated. Or different canonical version can be OK for now and then get split out later on during some back end data process at Google.

Even Google says not to trust them on this one if you have the option to fix it at YOUR server.

[Robert Charlton]

Regarding several issues raised in this discussion, I suggest taking a look at the Hot Topics [webmasterworld.com] section, pinned to the top of the Google SEO forum home page, and look at the Duplicate Content section, and in particular the canonical issues topics.

While I recommend reading all the threads in the section, these threads in particular apply to some of the questions and comments above...

Canonical URL Issues [webmasterworld.com] - many ways to introduce duplicates
Why "www" & "no-www" Are Different [webmasterworld.com] - the canonical duplicate issue
Domain Root vs. index.html [webmasterworld.com] - yet another kind of duplicate

I also recommend reading this thread from Jim Morgan in the Apache forum. The introduction will help clarify the concept of canonicalization. Jim then provides code for an all-in-one "domain/URL canonicalizaton and type-in fixup routine". The code is definitely for fairly advanced webmasters... but even if you don't understand it initially, and chances are you won't, it will perhaps reset your goal posts and give a glimmer of what's possible with .htaccess and what kinds of routines can be combined.

For the non-programmer, Jim's comments in the code are an education by themselves....

A guide to fixing duplicate content & URL issues on Apache
How to canonicalize all of your URLs with a single redirect
http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3208525.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[scottsonline]

Erin etc,

Are there any circumstances you have all seen where fixing issues of taking care of issues that caused two home pages to be indexed caused more trouble?

Before we make on page changes to the link structure we are hoping to hear mostly positive reports. Right now we have two PR 6 home pages, one due to a programmer error where an on site link pointer to the index.php file.

Before we correct that, I'm wondering if just leaving a canonical tag is safer,