Duplicate Homepage: www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.aspx

[flarson]

Hi,

I have a question regarding our client's site, http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ on ASP.net.

Google has indexed both www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx creating a duplicate content issue. We have added
to the default.aspx page. Now, because www.outsolve-hr.com/ and www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx are the same page on the actual backend the code is on the http://www.outsolve-hr.com/ when I view the code from the page loaded in a brower. Is this a problem? Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url.

We cannot do a 301 redirect from www.outsolve-hr.com/default.aspx to www.outsolve-hr.com/ because this causes an infinite loop because on the backend they are the same page.

So my question is two-fold:

• Will Google penalize the site for having the rel=canonical on the actual homepage...the canonical url.

• Is the rel="canonical" the best solution to fix the duplicate homepage issue on ASP.

And lastly, if Google has not indexed duplicate pages, such as https://www.outsolve-hr.com/DEFAULT.aspx, is it a problem that they exist?

Thanks in advance for your knowledge and assistance.

Amy

[TellThemEverything]

To all your questions - you did exactly the right thing. I run ASP.NET sites too so totally understand the problem.

I add a noindex to all https pages, FWIW.

[MaryAnneG]

The basic steps outlined below should work. CAVEAT: I'm a linux/apache person I don't know the specific implementation details for a windows/.net environment (but I believe it IS do-able - hopefully someone else can verify or expand on that)

1)  Copy the default index (default.aspx) to a new name (example: mydefault.aspx)

2. Make mydefault.aspx the directory index for the root directory

3. Modify the original default.aspx so that all it contains is a redirect to _http://www.outsolve-hr.com/_

4)  NOW default.aspx can be 301'd safely

5)  Don't ever build any links to "mydefault.aspx" or you'll just re-create the problem!

Existing links to default.aspx would then be resolved safely and it's highly unlikely new ones to  mydefault.aspx will appear.

Probably worth looking into, since a 301 is more powerful - rel=canonical is viewed by some search engines as more of a "suggestion."

[Guest]

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