redirect index.htm to index.php

does a redirect from index.htm to index.php harm google ranking?

[jazzx]

hi
i recently inserted an affiliate program into my website. the trigger for counting is index.php .
this setting comes from the program and can not be changed!
in google my site is indexed with index.htm (and cached).
when i redirect the index.htm to the index.php does that
1. harm my ranking?
or
2. is there another way to do that?
i don't want to loose the ranking.
can somebody help?
jazzx

[mat]

How are you handling the redirect?

[jazzx]

hi mat

thanks for the reply - i didn't do it yet but I would do it with the header entry:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=http://www.mydomain.com/index.php">

by the way - is that a 301 redirect?
pls. bring some light in my darkness...

[mat]

No, that's not a 301 redirect, that's a meta-redirect, and is not at all the best way to do things - it's quite easy to harm your exisitng rankings this way, and it's far from infallible.

Read up on 301 (permanently moved) redirection using .htaccess. The official protocol details are here:

[w3.org...]

[jazzx]

thanks mat

your reply helped me to avoid a big mistake...
thanks again
rgds
jazzx