Is it bad to have /index.php at the end of a uri?
-
Is it bad for SEO if traffic is directed to "http://www.example.com/someuri/index.php" instead of "http://www.example.com/someuri/" and would it be works setting up a redirect rule at htaccess level?
-
Yes bad for both. You now have the name of a file acting as the name of a folder.
As mentioned above - kill the use of index.php as your index "file" - just end in a slash.
I know php treats these as routes/queries that then produce a page, but it can get things all messed up real quick.
-
Oops thanks for all you answers, but what i should have said is: Is having "/index.php/" half way through the URI like so
"http://www.example.com/someuri/index.php/more_uri/"
bad for SEO/UX?
To clarify if one searched on Google for more_uri and everything else was equal would the index.php in the middle of that URI be damaging to the ranking?
Sorry about that
-
Whilst I don't think the index.php will have a direct impact on the SEO of your website it could easily have an indirect impact.
As CleverPhD rightly points out it is a pain in the *** to remember and type that sort of URL.
Not only for yourself but also for other websites and customers.
The impact this has is hard to quantify... If I'm a site in your niche and want to link to you does this put me off? What if I link to the wrong site?
Beyond that ending in index isn't as nice a user experience as just ending at the page name and ultimately its my belief that if you do whats best for the user you'll get good results from google.
-
Correct - the duplicate issue is what will hurt you. Whatever you go with, make sure the other variants 301 redirect to the "true" page.
-
OK thanks, so index.php won't effect the SEO results. But not redirecting it, as both /index.php and / work correctly and go to the same php file, will result in the same content being registered twice by Google I'm guessing?
-
It is not "bad", although typical style would be that you can drop it as the extra characters are not needed and nobody likes extra typing - just ask Mr. Twitter. He used brevity to become a billionaire! Hmm .. I wish we could get Moz points for alliteration.
What is key is that you are consistent in your use of it. If you want to use /index.php then go for it. Just make sure every time you link to that URL in your menus or in articles when you Twiddle it of Farcebook it, you include the /index.php at the end as you do not want to have duplicate URLs for the same page. I would also setup 301 redirects so that the / only version redirects to the index.php version.
All of that said, you are going to find that after the 104th time of Twiddling that URL, you will say, "Gee, it sure is a pain to type all those extra characters." You will also find that when people are going to share your URLs they may have a tendency to drop the index.php as again, it is extra work. If you have the redirect in place, you will be ok, but I say, why have you and everyone else do all that extra work to start with. Just start with the URL ending in the slash and stay with that. Have all other versions of the index page (index.php, index.htm or even a non slashed version, etc) 301 redirect to the URL that ends in a /.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Homepage Gateway for Website Divisions (Residential / Commercial) Bad for SEO?
When a website offers multiple divisions for products and services would it be a good SEO practice to implement something as Culligan does by having their homepage be a sort of gateway to the different divisions of site (home, office, commercial, industrial)? 2DaYz
Web Design | | m-johnson0 -
Help with error: Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server.
Hi all, We got this error for almost a month now. Until now we were outsourcing the webdesign and optimization, and now we are doing it in house, and the previous company did not gave us all the information we should know. And we've been trying to find this error and fix it with no result. Have you encounter this issue before? Did anyone found or knows a solution? Also would this affect our website in terms of SEO and in general. Would be very grateful to hear from you. Many thanks. Here is what appears on the bottom of the site( www.manvanlondon.co.uk) Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server. <address>Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at 01adserver.com Port 80</address> <address> </address> <address> </address>
Web Design | | monicapopa0 -
Google text-only vs rendered (index and ranking)
Hello, can someone please help answer a question about missing elements from Google's text-only cached version.
Web Design | | cpawsgo
When using JavaScript to display an element which is initially styled with display:none, does Google index (and most importantly properly rank) the elements contents? Using Google's "cache:" prefix followed by our pages url we can see the rendered cached page. The contents of the element in question are viewable and you can read the information inside. However, if you click the "Text-only version" link on the top-right of Google’s cached page, the element is missing and cannot be seen. The reason for this is because the element is initially styled with display:none and then JavaScript is used to display the text once some logic is applied. Doing a long-tail Google search for a few sentences from inside the element does find the page in the results, but I am not certain that is it being cached and ranked optimally... would updating the logic so that all the contents are not made visible by JavaScript improve our ranking or can we assume that since Google does return the page in its results that everything is proper? Thank you!0 -
Are Carousels Bad for SEO?
My real estate web site was migrated form Drupal to Wordpress last July. The ranking have dropped a lot since migration. One of the things we changed is that we have added two carousels to the home page. Most of the text is below the carousels. Is this bad for SEO? Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan1 -
Question #1: Does Google index https:// pages? I thought they didn't because....
generally the difference between https:// and http:// is that the s (stands for secure I think) is usually reserved for payment pages, and other similar types of pages that search engines aren't supposed to index. (like any page where private data is stored) My site that all of my questions are revolving around is built with Volusion (i'm used to wordpress) and I keep finding problems like this one. The site was hardcoded to have all MENU internal links (which was 90% of our internal links) lead to **https://**www.example.com/example-page/ instead of **http://**www.example.com/example-page/ To double check that this was causing a loss in Link Juice. I jumped over to OSE. Sure enough, the internal links were not being indexed, only the links that were manually created and set to NOT include the httpS:// were being indexed. So if OSE wasn't counting the links, and based on the general ideology behind secure http access, that would infer that no link juice is being passed... Right?? Thanks for your time. Screens are available if necessary, but the OSE has already been updated since then and the new internal links ARE STILL NOT being indexed. The problem is.. is this a volusion problem? Should I switch to Wordpress? here's the site URL (please excuse the design, it's pretty ugly considering how basic volusion is compared to wordpress) http://www.uncommonthread.com/
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Comparing the site structure/design of my live site to my new design
Hi SEOmoz team, for the last few months I've been working on a new design for my website, the old, live design can be viewed at http://www.concerthotels.com - it is primarily focused on helping users find hotels close to concert venues throughout North America. The old structure was built in such a way that each concert venue had a number of different pages associated with it (all connected via tabs) - a page with information about the venue, a page with nearby hotels to the venue, a page of upcoming events, a page of venue reviews. An example of these pages can be seen at: http://www.concerthotels.com/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-events/madison-square-garden-events/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-reviews/madison-square-garden-reviews/304484 The /venue-hotels/ pages are the most important pages on my website - and there is one of these pages for each concert venue - they are the landing pages for about 90% of the traffic on the website. I decided that having four pages for each venue was probably a poor design, since many of the pages ended up having little or no useful, unique content. So my new design attempts to bring a lot of the venue information together into fewer pages. My new website redesign is temporarily situated at: (not currently launched to the public) http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend The equivalent pages for Madison Square Garden are now: http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 (the page above contains venue information, events and reviews) and http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 I would really appreciate any feedback from you guys, based on what you think of the new site design compared to the old design from an SEO point of view. Of course, any feedback on site speed, easy of use etc compared to the old design would also be greatly appreciated. 🙂 My main fear is that when I launch the new design (the new URLs will be identical to the old ones), Google will take a dislike to it - I currently receive a large percentage of my traffic through Google organic search, so I don't want to launch a design that might damage that traffic. My gut instinct tells me that Google should prefer the new design - vastly reduced number of pages, each page now contains more unique content, and it's very much designed for users, so I'm hoping bounce rate, conversion etc will improve too. But my gut has been wrong in the past! 🙂 But I'd love to hear your thoughts, and thanks in advance for any feedback, Cheers Mike
Web Design | | mjk260 -
Does anyone think the <figcaption>attribute from HTML5 will have any influence for image search?</figcaption>
There is a <figure>element that is supposed to provide better descriptions of image on the web in HTML5 - do you think that will replace the importance of the "Alt" tag? Link to figcaption description </figure>
Web Design | | RankSurge2