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htaccess removing /index.php lose incoming links?

         

Jade99

12:56 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello, I am trying to work my way through why Yahoo wont index anymore than my homepage (No prob with Google).

I think it is all to do with duplication. I have a mix of
1. "dynamic pages" /index.php?page=help
and
2. ALL "duplicate meta-tags throughout my sites pages" because my website uses the Smarty Templates system which doesnt allow me to have different meta tags on each page! ?

I found this code for htaccess which removes the index.php from say [mysite.com...] because it is to help stop duplication.

# Remove index.php from root
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ [mysite.com...] [R=301,L]

My question is...Is this a good idea now as my site isnt new. Will this REDIRECT existing incoming links or would I lose them?

I have also just "enabled" some URL normalization words in Bing Webmaster, like "page", infact I think I enabled them all, as I am guessing Yahoo/Bing must have seen them as a problem in the first place?

I do have "some pages" mod rewritten to .html pages, but even these are not indexed in Yahoo.

Any feedback "much" appreciated.
Thank you :)

g1smd

5:57 pm on Feb 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



The redirect will retain traffic, but will skew your Analytics a little. There is a little bit of loss of backlink benefit, but this is minor.

Use example.com in code examples in this forum.

Jade99

12:00 pm on Feb 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks g1smd, so adding the code and getting rid of the index.php would be more beneficial than keeping it in the long run do you think?

ps. couldnt change the example.com...out of time

lucy24

10:07 pm on Feb 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



so adding the code and getting rid of the index.php would be more beneficial than keeping it in the long run do you think?

Yes, but you also have to make sure that all your own links point to

/directoryname/

rather than

/directoryname/index.php

The redirect is added as insurance, to pick up outdated links from other places. If your internal links remain in the wrong form, the search engines will keep crawling everything forever.

That applies to all directories everywhere, not only your front page.
 

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