Home page vs index page

Is this a problem of duplication.

[twilight47]

Due to the nature of our website construction, we have an index page www.widgets.com and a home page www.widgets.com/home.html that are the same. Is this a major problem?

I am going through and eliminating all links to the home.html page, but due to bookmarks and other indexes it is important to keep it the same as our index page.

If it is a problem for google, will having a robot text on the home.html page (ie no follow) remedy the situation?

[swones]

Are you able to setup a 301 redirect from /homepage.html to www.widgets.com/

What webserver is your site running on?

Simon.

[twilight47]

I probably can redirect, it just doesn't look as professional. Is that the only way to get around this?

[jdMorgan]

swones asked a very good question above.

If you tell us what kind of server (e.g. Apache, IIS) you're running on, we can give a more focused list of options.

A 301-Moved Permanently redirect, if done by the server, doesn't "look unprofessional" at all; Requests for www.domain.com/home will be redirected instantly to www.domain.com/ - The browser address bar will update, and that is that.

Meanwhile, any search engine which has your page indexed as www.domain.com/home will be told to change that URL to www.domain.com/ in its database.

If you're not sure what kind of server you're on, you can check here [webmasterworld.com].

Jim