is mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.php the same?

[PrincessJasmine]

is mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.php the same?

I see them listed separately on my sitemap?
If yes, will Google treat it as duplicated content?

Thanks

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by PrincessJasmine

is mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.php the same?

I see them listed separately on my sitemap?
If yes, will Google treat it as duplicated content?

Thanks

Yes, they are different pages if both URLs exist and you have not 301 redirected them.

Just like www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com are different pages until you add a 301 redirect.

[PrincessJasmine]

Originally Posted by dadamson

Yes, they are different pages if both URLs exist and you have not 301 redirected them.

Just like www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com are different pages until you add a 301 redirect.

Ahh I see
What should I do at this point?
Who should I redirect?

[UMS]

When you go you your main domain, does it redirect to index.php?

[PrincessJasmine]

Originally Posted by UMS

When you go you your main domain, does it redirect to index.php?

No, it doesnt.

[Sitemapper]

I would redirect index.php to your website domain root. Always try minimize duplicate URLs. (This also helps focus the backlink juice instead of spreading it out.)

That said, the sitemappper tool should be able to automatically figure out that the index.php URL most likely is a duplicate. (Infact otherwise Google Webmaster Tools will often in similar cases issue warnings about URLs GWT thinks may be duplicates.)

[PrincessJasmine]

Update:

I just tried using 301 redirect on my index.php page to my domain.
Placed the following code on my index.php

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.mydomain.com" );
?>

I then tried accessing website immediately after, and received an error message
"redirect issue: loop" (or something like that).

I am wondering if I did anything wrong here?
From my understanding, I didnt really created any loop, and was trying to redirect index.php to my website domain root.

I am very confused here. Please help. Thanks!

[paulgl]

They are not different pages, they are the same thing.

99.9999999999999999999% of people with website
do not have to worry about a thing. Many servers
can have multiple urls going to the main index page.
domain.com, www .domain.com, www .domain.com/,
domain.com/, etc. etc. etc.

It's no big deal. Google is smart enough to judge which
version to show in SERPs. It doesn't even matter if you
make backlinks with any range of them. You don't
really need to 301 anything, but it makes webmasters
feelgood.

Does it "look" like multiple pages to "google"?
Yes, but not in the sense that people should panic
about a thing.

If your server is set up so that index.php is where
people go to when typing in domain.com. like warriorforum.com,
then it matters not. It's the same friggin' page.

And if your server is set up for index.php to indeed be
where the visitor goes, then you are actually at
domain.com/index.php even though the browser just
shows domain.com.

This is just something in the past that used to make
webmasters panic after hearing google thinks it's
a different page. It does not matter one iota.

What would matter is if people typed in domain.com
and it went nowhere. Then that would be a server
issue that can be solved very easily. The flip side
is true as well. Some servers do not know what to
do with www .domain.com. Luckily, must servers go
to the index page no matter what a person types.

But getting to same page on multiple urls DOES NOT
mean there are multiple pages, and google is smart
enough to know that. In fact, the point is beyond
being moot in 2012.

Paul

[Crank]

What if people put links to your www. domain.com, domain.com, domain.com/index.php - which page get the link juice? each from the list? in this case it's reasonable to add a 301 redirect.

[thecableguy]

The index page is the default page for the folder. In other words if no specific page url is entered it will default to the index file.

For instance type in google.com or google.com/index.html and it's the same page, it's just defaulting to the index file. If you create subdomains or subfolders you should put an index file in there even if you don't have any readable files in there or depending on your server they could have access to all the files in the folder.

If it's not redirecting to index.php you don't have anything to worry about. Since there are different file extensions php, html, htm, asp, pdf, etc I doubt anyone would enter or link to index.php or whatever, it would be minimal at most. And besides it's the same page. As for the www and non www version link to one and create a redirect for the other.