Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Root vs. Index.html
-
Should I redirect index.html to "/" or vice versa? Which is better for duplicate content issues?
-
The index.html file name offers no value for SEO nor users. I recommend not using it and directing users to a "clean" URL (eg seomoz.org/ instead of seomoz.org/index.html).
As long as you properly set this up and consistently link to the same URL there are not any duplicate content issues. If you wish to go one step further you can add the canonical tag to your page.
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
-
Google is indexing bad URLS
Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hey Mozzers! I'm battling a few questions about the sitemap for my ecommerce store. Could you help me out? Is it necessary to include your product attributes in the sitemap? I'm not sure why it would matter to have a sitemap that lists everything in the color cherry. Also, if the attributes were included in the sitemap, would that count as duplicate content for the same products to show up in multiple attributes? Is there any benefit to submitting the sitemaps individually? For example, submitting /product-sitemap.xml, /product_brand-sitemap.xml versus just /sitemap.xml? Any other best practices for managing my ecommerce sitemap, or great resources, would be very helpful. Thank you! a1vUz
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
403s vs 404s
Hey all, Recently launched a new site on S3, and old pages that I haven't been able to redirect yet are showing up as 403s instead of 404s. Is a 403 worse than a 404? They're both just basically dead-ends, right? (I have read the status code guides, yes.)
Technical SEO | | danny.wood1 -
How to stop my webmail pages not to be indexed on Google ??
when i did a search in google for Site:mywebsite.com , for a list of pages indexed. Surprisingly the following come up " Webmail - Login " Although this is associated with the domain , this is a completely different server , this the rackspace email server browser interface I am sure that there is nothing on the website that links or points to this.
Technical SEO | | UIPL
So why is Google indexing it ? & how do I get it out of there. I tried in webmaster tool but I could not , as it seems like a sub-domain. Any ideas ? Thanks Naresh Sadasivan0 -
What to do with 302 redirects being indexed
Hi there, Our site's forums include permalinks that for some reason uses an intermediary URL that 302 redirects to the URL with the permalink anchor. For example: http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/ In the comments, there is a permalink to the following URL; en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/ (there is no content here, and never has been). This URL 302 redirects to the following final URL: http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/?offset=0&limit=20#50c450005f2b949e3200001b The problem is, Google is indexing the redirect URL (en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/) and showing duplicate content even though we are using the nofollow tag on these links. Ideally, we would directly use the last link rather than redirecting. Alternatively, I'd say a 301 redirect would be preferable. But if both aren't available, is there a way to get these pages out of the index? Is the canonical tag the best way? I really wish I could just add /co/ to the robots.txt file, but I think they would still be in the index, right? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | etruvian0 -
Instant Indexing
I've been working on a site for a while now, methodically building content and building trust and authority. Lately I've noticed that anything I publish there appears to be instantly indexed by Google, which surprises me. I haven't had this happen before so I'm curious. I'd be interested to hear the experience of others.
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Sitmap Page - HTML and XML
Hi there I have a domain which has a sitemap in html for regular users and a sitemap in xml for the spiders. I have a warning via seomoz saying that i have too many links on the html version. What do i do here? regards Stef
Technical SEO | | stefanok0 -
/index.php in sitemap? take it out?
Hi Everyone, The following was automatically generated at xml-sitemaps.com Should I get rid of the index.php url from my sitemap? If so, how do I go about redirecting it in my htaccess ? <url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/</loc></url>
Technical SEO | | RogersSEO
<url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/index.php</loc></url> thank you in advance, Martin0