Bots recieving 301s on pages that shouldn't, then get 200

[dweidig]

On a new site I have made, googlebot and MSNbot are coming around, however both are getting 301s on pages that shouldn't be getting 301s. I've looked at the header through firefox, and I've even created my own PHP script to hammer the site, but I cannot reduplicate this.

Here is two subsequent lines from my logs

1/17/2006 3:02:14 AM /books/ 301 msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm
1/17/2006 3:06:37 AM /books/ 200 msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)

Similiar things happen for other pages, and with Googlebot.

Has anyone ever seen this before, or have any idea what could be causing this? I am using some mod_rewrites, but none that should have any effect on the pages in question, and like I said, I can't recreate this myself.

Thanks for any help

[encyclo]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld dweidig!

Looks like a non-www to www redirect (or the reverse) to me. The bot requests:

http://example.com/books/

and gets a 301 to:

http://www.example.com/books/

Which is a 200.