For some reason, Google Webmaster Tools shows that I have crawl errors because of other sites linking to www.ciagent.com/index.html, but that file doesn't exist. I checked the sites that are linking to me, but they just link to my root address without index.html.

I use Wordpress, so my index file is index.php

I want to get rid of these crawl errors because I fear I'm losing SEO link juice. I think I need to 301 redirect the nonexistent index.html to the root of my website?

This is my current .htaccess code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

I tried to add this line:

redirect 301 /index.html http://www.ciagent.com

But this 'breaks' my website.

What can I add to make sure that requests for index.html get properly redirected to my www.ciagent.com root?

there must be something on your site thoe, that caused it to point to .html make sure you don't have the html extension in your sitemap

add a page to your site called index.html, then verify it with Google webmaster tools.

Than do a 301 redirect via google wt to your site, then delete the .html file

if not, your pr your gaining from the links will be lost to the .html file even if you redirect via a htaccess file.

You cannot redirect a index file to the root without causing an infinite loop, as it is the index file that the server delivers on it's repeated request.

You need to use THE_REQUEST directive
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=42402

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You cannot redirect a index file to the root without causing an infinite loop, as it is the index file that the server delivers on it's repeated request.

You need to use THE_REQUEST directive
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=42402

you can redirect a index.html to a index.php thoe.

you can redirect a index.html to a index.php thoe

And the point of that would be?

not much, i think someone that went on a linking spree for him, posted the wrong, link, so now they hit a .html page that doesn't exist.

so instead of linking to site.com ( which is a .php extention )

they linked to
site.com/index.html

Originally Posted by ModDish

not much, i think someone that went on a linking spree for him, posted the wrong, link, so now they hit a .html page that doesn't exist.

so instead of linking to site.com ( which is a .php extention )

they linked to
site.com/index.html

Nope.

It is to avoid splitting the links between the site root and ANY index page name. So redirecting from one index page name to another merely moves the problem.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You cannot redirect a index file to the root without causing an infinite loop, as it is the index file that the server delivers on it's repeated request.

You need to use THE_REQUEST directive
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=42402

Thank you! I used the code from that topic and it seems to work. I hope the index.html crawl errors will start disappearing now.

Here is my new code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /([^/]*/)*index\.(html?|php)(\?[^\ ]*)?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(([^/]*/)*)index\.(html?|php)$  http://www.ciagent.com/$1  [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   ^ciagent\.com                     [NC]
RewriteRule  (.*)           http://www.ciagent.com/$1        [R=301,L]
</IfModule>

Chris I know its an old thread but I just wanted to thank you for the link to that piece of code been trying to re-direct index.html to my root for ages, just kept getting the infinate loop so thanks again.