multiple index and default pages

[twcman]

Does anyone have an opinion as to whether using all the possible index and default page extensions will help or more importantly penalize you in SEO? example...

All of these would be the same html page:
index.htm
index.html
index.shtml
default.htm
default.html

you get the idea....

The only dumb questions are the ones that are never asked

 

[mThomas]

The type of index extension you use will not have any affect with spider search engines. There are lots of things to consider, but when you get right down to the nitty gritty, content is king.

Here is a link

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/features.html

that will give you an overview of the particulars for the major search engines.

mike

http://www.udraw2.com

 

[Wullie]

Mike

You read the post wrong.

twcman

I'm not sure about the main engines but very likely they will be set-up to filter the actual index file names so that they either only index 1 or don't use the file names at all. This is done so that you don't have

http://www.mydomain.com

and

http://www.mydomain.com/index.html

returning as 2 records.

Hope this helps Wullie

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.mailtosanta.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[mThomas]

Wullie,

I don't think I read the post wrong at all. Well maybe, but what I posted is correct. The index extension will have absolutly no bearing on how a page is ranked or indexed.

mike

 

[Wullie]

Mike

He was asking if using every one of those files together would make a difference, not one at a time. Every one of those index files would exist with the exact same content.

Hope this helps Wullie

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.mailtosanta.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[mThomas]

I understood the post and what I posted is still correct. It doesn't matter what extension you use or how many of them you use.

mike

 

[RISTMO]

I think that you're both wrong ;-).

Rick

 

[twcman]

Thanks for the post RISTMO. But could you elaborate more as to why you think they are wrong?

The only dumb questions are the ones that are never asked

 

[mThomas]

The question was an excellent one, but the answer is very basic. It does not matter what extention you use nor will it matter whether you use both a .htm and or .html index when it comes to indexing or ranking. What matters is what is on the pages. Content is king.

mike

 

[Wullie]

Hi guys,

After a bit of research on this topic, most (If not all) engines index the url and ignore the default index document extension.

I have found quite a few ways round this but when it comes down to it, there is not really any point of doing this anyway. After all, when a url is called, only the first DirectoryIndex (If apache) found in the list is called. This means that nobody would ever see the other documents. In each directory, you can only have one default document, after that is called, the others are not default docs.

However, in a subdirectory, the default documents seem to sometimes be indexed separately from the actual directory.

http://www.domain.com/dir/index.shtml

and

http://www.domain.com/dir/

are indexed as separate pages on some.

If you really wanted to have multiple pages with the same content and the spiders to index them all, you could fool the spider.

1) If index.shtml is stripped from any top level url, you could alter the default documents to use mynewdefault.shtml etc. That file is called as a default document but the spider would also index it separately.

2) You could simply have page1.html page2.html rather than index.html and index.htm.

Hope this helps

Hope this helps Wullie

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.mailtosanta.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell

 

[RISTMO]

I was joking. I don't know as much as them at SEO, so they might both be right!

Rick

 

[twcman]

wullie,
I like your answer but, now that I think about it, would not having multiple pages with the same content whether my method or yours be considered spamming by some SE's? Also, you said that only the default doc is called and indexed. What about the SE's that do deep indexing of sites, would they not find the "other" pages in the directory?

mThomas,
Just for the record, I fully agree that content is king.

RISTMO,
Just noticed the winking face next to your post. The only dumb questions are the ones that are never asked

 

[Wullie]

twcman

A spider has the same access to your site as a normal browser. Unless you linked to the other pages from the spidered page, the spider would not find them, it cannot just find every file in a directory.

The whole point I was making is that if you have 10 files named default.htm default.html default.shtml index.shtml etc and the engine has a filter to remove all default names from search results, then none of them would be included in the index, only the actual url.

Would you be spamming the engines? What do you think?

Happy New Year Guys, I'm away to get druk. Have fun.

Hope this helps Wullie

http://www.freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.mailtosanta.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change.
The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell