Indexed pages in Google

Gray bar on domain but PR4 on index.htm

[PhraSEOlogy]

Hi,

I have a question regarding pagerank. I have a customer site that has been redesigned and the index.htm page has a PR4 but when you access the site using only the domain name you get a gray bar.

www.domain.com - NO PR gray bar
www.domain.com/index.htm - PR4

Could this mean a penalty for some reason?

Thanks...Chris.

[ciml]

Chris, I'm pretty sure that /index.html is no longer crawled, any links to it count as links to /

If it was Index.html or index.shtml then I would expect that Google saw links to the URL and listed it, but for some reason missed the "/" URL. There's no reason in HTTP why they should be the same, but Google seems to see index.html and index.htm as a special cases.

[dirkz]

Just check which pages actually are in the index (site:example.tld -qertz), then you know whether there could be a penalty.

If you have no links to example.tld but only links to example.tld/index.html a white TPR (PR0) for the "unknown" page is usually the case.

[PhraSEOlogy]

Ciml, dirkz,

Thanks for the response. Here is the crazy thing. I use google search for the keywords and a click on "domain . com /" will bring up a gray bar PR. Then I use the search limited to site: domain . com /" and click on the link and get PR4. Both pointing to the same domain but with different PR.

Strange don't ya think?

Very confused - so is my customer...

[claus]

>> Could this mean a penalty for some reason?

These two different URLs may simply have a different amount of inbounds links. Even though the page is the same, the URL is not. I guess most of your inbounds go to "index.htm".

[the_nerd]

In which way do you link back to your homepage? [mydomain.com...] or [mydomain.com?...]

[ciml]

That used to make a difference the_nerd, but links to /index.html are now treated as links to /

[the_nerd]

ciml,

That used to make a difference the_nerd, but links to /index.html are now treated as links to /

ic. Just asked because I had linked to ..../index.CFM before which wasn't a good idea. Do they catch other default names apart from index.html?

[ciml]

As far as I know, just index.html and index.htm - not InDex.HtMl, index.shtml, default.asp, etc.

[kaled]

I suggested a solution (sort of) for Google in the TO DO list thread. It seems to me that the problem of default pages and search engines should have been sorted out long ago.

Kaled.

[onfire]

PhraSEOlogy

I had the exact same thing about a month ago this problem suddenly appeared.

www.domain.com - NO PR grey bar
www.domain.com/index.htm - PR4

What i found is when i was doing internal linking i was linking to the www.domain.com/index.htm but not all, a couple of them were going to www.domain.com/

But most important all my inbound links were going to www.domain.com/

So i change all my internal links to www.domain.com/ instead of www.domain.com/index.htm and shortly after the grey bar stopped appearing at all and now www.domain.com/ shows PR and no more grey bar

[HughMungus]

I switched from using index.htm on a PR5 page to index.shtml and I'm not PR0. Forunately, this is on a site where PR doesn't matter (it's in DMOZ, hehehe).

[PhraSEOlogy]

Hi folks,

Thanks for the feedback.

I will take a look at suggestion by onfire to alter internal links to make sure they point at "/".

I will let you know the results.

Thanks, Chris.

[PhraSEOlogy]

I decided to check out onfires suggestion and noticed the following...

"domain.com" - PR4
"domain.com/" - Gray bar
"domain.com/index.htm - PR4

From this I am assuming "domain.com" and "domain.com/index.htm" are seen as the same URL to google and "/" is a different URL.

So the default URL is PR4 and the "/" is not yet rated by google - would you agree?

[onfire]

Not sure if its not rated or just seen a duplicate content, hence the grey bar

I know a few have said it did not matter in that google now treated / & index.html as the same

All was well for about 8 weeks from the site getting its first ever PR, and then suddenly this grey bar kept appearing and all i could see was that on my site there was a mix (newbee webmaster that i am) of www.domain.com/index.html & www.domain.com/ and after taking advice from a friend i made the changes and it worked and the changes happened pretty quickly, the site gets crawled daily which might have helped the change process.

How old is the site?
inbound links where do they go to www.domain.com/index.html or www.domain.com/?

if its a newish like mine and its only just had PR in last 2 months, then i would say its the same problem i had, and i chose to put all my internal links to my home page from www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com/ as this would be the same for all my inbound links which is how PR is calculated along with the Anchor text of course.

Whatever changes you decide to make will of course take some time to show, WaitWaitWait

[PhraSEOlogy]

The site is 2-3 years old. I just did a revamp recently to make it rank better. It ranks great for lots of keywords #1 and #2 in google - except for the "KEY" keywords and I think thats due to the stupid gray bar.

All the inbounds go to www.domain.com/ - apart from the links that go to "deeper" pages on the site.

Onfire, my main weakness (amongst others) is no patience. Having to wait wait wait is something I will have to adapt to!

[sparrow]

My problem is similiar;

domain.com = pr4
domain.com/ = grey toolbar
domain.com/index.html = pr4
www.domain.com = pr4
www.domain.com/ = pr4
www.domain.com/index.html = pr4

All the internal pages are pr4 as well. What I don't understand is that everything was fine until the September update, then it starting going haywire. All the pages are indexed within Google, yet we are falling dramatically in the last 2 months. From no. 2 to no 8. The site that are above are look to have the same problem. Two of the sites above ours have "Duplicate Content" with different domain names. I thought that was a penalty.

Any ideas how to get back to no 2.

[PhraSEOlogy]

Sparrow,

There are lower PR sites with fewer inbounds above my clients site in the SERPS and I am sure this is because of the gray bar scenario. Their internal pages rank #1 and #2 on google for a variety of keywords but the main keyword in almost "invisible".

I am going to keep plugging at this problem but I guess at some stage it will *correct* itself.