Newbie questions: / vs index.html and redirection

[dobaba]

I am new to this forum and this has probably been answered, but I could not find the answer doing a search. Can anyone explain this behavior:

1. google will return different results when I try
link:http://www.mysite.com/ versus
link:http://www.mysite.com

= It only does this in a newly indexed sites. The
old ones return the same result.

2. I moved a webpage. All links point to the new page.
On the old page I have a redirect in the form of:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="0;
URL=http://www.newsite.com">
<script language="JavaScript">
location.replace
("http://www.newsite.com);
</script>

= Google is indexing the old page (with the new
page contents) even though there are no links
to the old page. The new page is not even
listed.

-

[Brett_Tabke]

1- foo.com/ can return a different page than foo.com. It works that way because those are two different urls. Same as doing link:foozer.com/bubba.html or link:foozer.com/sally.html

2- you must have links pointing at the old page somewhere. Google is not all that fond of meta refreshes and doesn't necc associate the old page with the new page. Put up some links elsewhere to the new page.

[dobaba]

> 1- foo.com/ can return a different page than foo.com.
> It works that way because those are two different urls.
> Same as doing link:foozer.com/bubba.html or
> link:foozer.com/sally.html

That's what I thought, but google is not consistent in that behavior. I have a site that was indexed a couple of years ago and it shows the same results for:
foo.com
foo.com/
foo.com/index.html

That makes sense, because at the end, it is the same page.

> 2- you must have links pointing at the old page
> somewhere. Google is not all that fond of meta
> refreshes and doesn't necc associate the old page
> with the new page. Put up some links elsewhere to
> the new page.

That's the thing. I do not have links to the older page (I did before Esmeralda). If I search for link:www.oldpage.com google does not return any results. It only returns results when I search for link:www.newpage.com.

So, I find it very strange that google knows that:
1. there are links to the new page
2. there are no links to the old page
and Google still indexes the old page instead of the new one.