Is Google Finally Seeing Index.html Etc. As Same As The Root?, No more splitting of link pop! Options

[Jill]

We do a lot of site audit reports here at High Rankings headquarters, and one of the things we traditionally look for is the splitting of internal link popularity due to websites linking to their home page as /index.html or something to that effect. (Rather than linking to it simply as www.example.com.)

In the past, this was indeed a problem as you could look at the cache for index.html and it Google would see it as it's own page, separate from www.example.com. They'd often have different toolbar PR as well.

But it appears that in like that last 5 reports (or more) that we've done, Google is seeing the index page as the same as the root. Yay Google, it's about time!

Anyone else noticing this?

If so, it's about time. It never made sense that they couldn't figure out such a simple thing.

[incrediblehelp]

I guess this can be tough for them sometimes, because they probably found it hard to guess what the default server doc for the home page.

[Ron Carnell]

I think Google has always (for many years, at least) recognized the default index page as being the same as the naked domain -- it's just called the duplicate content filter and can take a long time to kick into gear. In my experience, it's essentially the same as example.com versus www.example.com. When the content is identical and other obvious qualifications are met, Google merges the pages into one. But it doesn't (and in my opinion, can't) make any prior assumptions apart from the dup content filters.

Unless you're seeing it on relatively young domains, Jill, I wouldn't think anything has changed. I suspect you're just seeing the end results of an always lengthy process?

[Jill]

Unless you're seeing it on relatively young domains, Jill, I wouldn't think anything has changed. I suspect you're just seeing the end results of an always lengthy process?

That could be it, that the last reports I did were older domains. But, it just seemed unusual to have so many in a row that passed the test when generally the sites we've checked never used to!

It's really more of a curiosity on my part than anything else.

[Randy]

One would also have to wonder if the effect being seen is simply Google becoming more effective with their duplicate content filters, specifically applying them more quickly and making them apply to site: types of searches.

I've not looked at the subject in a long time. But it would be pretty tough to ascribe the index.html pages suddently going bye bye to any one thing, unless you saw some consistent, across the board ranking improvements that might lean towards a merging situation.

[mcanerin]

It would be interesting if they did start doing that, and what the process was.

I've worked on several sites that actually had accumulated, over the years, several "default" pages. default.htm, default.html and index.php all in the same root. This happens a lot with webmasters who just upload things via FTP but don't clean things up over time.

I'd be interested to see if/how Google handled that scenario faster than it used to. I suspect you just got lucky, but if they did do something, I'd really like to know what.

Ian

[incrediblehelp]

I've worked on several sites that actually had accumulated, over the years, several "default" pages. default.htm, default.html and index.php all in the same root. This happens a lot with webmasters who just upload things via FTP but don't clean things up over time.

Very true Ian and this is what I was talking more towards. Lots of websites have multiple home page versions live.

[Jill]

I'll definitely keep my eye on this as I do more site audits.

If I have some time, I might go back to some of our past audits to find instances where G wasn't seeing them as the same, and see if they are now. (Of course, the clients may have fixed things on their site by now too, but we all know how slow they are to implement recommendations!)

[Ron Carnell]

FWIW, I've seen a few instances in the past where Google forgot what once it seemed to know? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I've had at least two sites where the duplicate content filters had long since merged example.com and www.example.com, only to see Google suddenly and mysteriously unmerge them later. I guess it makes sense when you think about it. It's just a database, after all, and one that we all know gets refreshed and rebuilt from time to time. Just because Google sets a flag somewhere to handle these canonical issues for domains and index pages is no guarantee the flag will forever remain set.

Moral: Be proactive! I don't think it's necessarily wise to depend on Google to fix your problems. And even when it doesn't seem to be a problem today, it just might become one next month. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink1.gif)