Worried about index page duplication

DavidO · 06-05-2009, 01:58 AM

I'm a little alarmed because I've learned, thanks to the WF, that having both a root domain and index.html is duplicate content. I've been advised to 301 redirect the index page to my root domain.

This sounds like good practice, just to be safe, but surely Google knows these are both the same page???... and won't penalize you for it?

Also, I have both domain.com and www.domain.com versions. I've read advice to "force" the the first one to the "www" version.

Can anyone elaborate on this and explain the ramifications of these pages and possible duplicate content?

bgmacaw · 06-05-2009, 06:06 AM

It's nothing to be worried about. Google's algorithm can figure this out just fine. The only place you would encounter a problem is if you're doing cloaking or other blackhat methods to show different content to visitors and search engine bots.

06-05-2009, 01:58 AM	#1
DavidO Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: United Kingdom, Spain Posts: 2,031 Thanks: 10 Thanked 101 Times in 58 Posts	Worried about index page duplication I'm a little alarmed because I've learned, thanks to the WF, that having both a root domain and index.html is duplicate content. I've been advised to 301 redirect the index page to my root domain. This sounds like good practice, just to be safe, but surely Google knows these are both the same page???... and won't penalize you for it? Also, I have both domain.com and www.domain.com versions. I've read advice to "force" the the first one to the "www" version. Can anyone elaborate on this and explain the ramifications of these pages and possible duplicate content?

06-05-2009, 06:06 AM	#2
bgmacaw Senior Warrior Member War Room Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Atlanta GA Metro Area, USA. Posts: 3,643 Blog Entries: 5 Thanks: 309 Thanked 922 Times in 642 Posts Social Networking	Re: Worried about index page duplication It's nothing to be worried about. Google's algorithm can figure this out just fine. The only place you would encounter a problem is if you're doing cloaking or other blackhat methods to show different content to visitors and search engine bots.
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