My site has been up for about two months and just recently I have noticed that there is a duplication of my Index page with an HTML extension. I am using FrontPage and have only generated and updated all pages with HTM extensions. Can someone enlighten me as to how this duplicate Home page with the HTML extension has come into existence?

You created it at one point and then forgot about it completely, thus when you found it you were completely shocked.

That's not the right answer! Anyone else?

pixies!

Who knows ?? and what difference does it make anyway???

It makes quite a difference!

Are the two index's the same page? If so - blow one away. If you keep both you'll end up updating 2 pages everytime you want to change the index. Even if you don't update one, it will be indexed by search engines. So, again, get rid of one.

If they're not the same - I'm guessing one is a holding page. A default page put there by your hosting provider. Again, blitz it.

Cheers,
SC

It makes quite a difference!

And pray, how does it? Just as long as the one the OP has uploaded is showing it will make absolutely no difference to the site whatsoever.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And pray, how does it? Just as long as the one the OP has uploaded is showing it will make absolutely no difference to the site whatsoever.

...it makes a difference because BOTH index pages will get indexed by search engines...

...it makes a difference because BOTH index pages will get indexed by search engines...

Rubbish!!!

The server will only serve the one default page. So search engines and browsers will never know the other page exists

...wrong again buddy...

If you're saying that yo do not have both an html and an htm version of the page in your root directory I would recommend creating one and then doing a 301 redirect from the unwanted page to the one you plan to use.

...wrong again buddy...

Well, I've only been a server admin for 12 years and working with websites and search engines for 5 years and never come across the phenomena before, but I'm always willing to learn.

So show me!
Demonstrate this "fact".


to AquaSparkle,
No you do not need to do anything of the sort, the server will only serve up the first matching document in the list.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Well, I've only been a server admin for 12 years and working with websites and search engines for 5 years and never come across the phenomena before, but I'm always willing to learn.

So show me!
Demonstrate this "fact".


to AquaSparkle,
No you do not need to do anything of the sort, the server will only serve up the first matching document in the list.

http://www.google.com/bot.html
Read number 6.

Now how pray does that show that search engines will find TWO default documents on the server. It says that SEs will index a page they find a link to which is pretty common knowledge quite honestly.


The fact still is that only one default document that will be served up, regardless of how many possibles are in the folder.

On most of the sites that I look after have 3 default documents in place so I can put a different message in place if I am updating or need to take one off line temporarily.
User agents (Browsers and SEs) do not know what the page is called so can never indiex a different one.

Go re-read that googlebot page again. Point 6 - it talks about Referrer logs. Now stop behaving like your avatar ....please.

SC

Ermm? yes referer logs. and your point being ???


So a visitor follows a link from a page which they can't find anyway because it won't be served up to another server which may have their referers public and linked.

Hmm okay then.

The dude who started this thread. Anyone he has shown the second page to. They've been there and are likely in referrer logs already.

You keep making the assumption that a page has to be linked to be indexed. Not true. A quick Google search yielded...

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/

The logs are here:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/newstat...11/output.html

Yet not linked to anywhere on the site... nor on google...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?as_lq...ml&btnG=Search

...there you have it. One Referrer Log that is NOT linked yet turns up on Google. If a log can be found that easily in a few seconds you can betcha *** hits will turn up to the second index.

I come across this daily - we find backup zip files on web servers, all manner of things. Trust me, if it's out there - it turns up.

If you still don't believe me - add a page to your web server, lots of content, no links to it anywhere. Then let me know when it's on google. It might take a while, but it'll get there.

Peace,
SC

Nope sorry, There has to be a link for Google to find the file/pages

inurl:www.candsdesign.co.uk/deadstuff/

try that search at google. There is 30 - 40 files in that folder plus 15 or so sub folders

I also have 20 test sites setup on a server that I use for showing new layouts and setups to clients. They have never been crawled.

I have pages on my site that are not linked anywhere but have been submitted to Google, MSN and Yahoo, Not crawled.
There are pages on my site that are linked to without being clickable, Not crawled

I test this kind of "information" on a daily basis and if there isn't a link NO search engine will find it.

User Agents do not traverse website folders and files, they have no way of finding what the default document is for any given server, they cannot perform any kind of file search on a given site/URL. Unless they are told explicitly the exact location and name of a document they cannot find it and in the case of *nix machines if you get the case wrong ( Filename.xxx instead of filename.xxx ) the file will 404 error out.

Anyone he has shown the second page to. They've been there and are likely in referrer logs already.

Assuming of course that those logs are available to be indexed by being made public and relatively speaking only a miniscule amount are.

Also assuming that they have the url and the actual filename in question because neither are mentioned here.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

I test this kind of "information" on a daily basis and if there isn't a link NO search engine will find it.

Ok, this is getting silly and a little off topic. You're naive if you think things won't be found, but back on track - I maintain that the original poster should nuke the second index...

Peace,
SC

Before two years I have free hosting. If I put index.htm on this host I cant see my page. All other pages with htm extension was OK but index page must have html extension. I really dont know why. Maybe your admin or some PHP script create copy of your index page if MUST have html extension?!

Sorry for poor English.

My host dumps a pre-made index.html into my root folder every now and then. i think it's just a new user thing where if no index.html exists in your root folder they copy a default page. I'm using a index.php file there so...