/index.php/ page

[ciznerguy]

I was wondering if my system creates this page www my domain com/index.php/

is it better to block with robot.txt or just canonize?

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

Your question is not really clear. If you're building your website using a program like FrontPage, it creates a "home page" usually using index.htm or index.html.  index.php is not typically "created" unless you're using a program like Wordpress or some other PHP based site that uses it for the home page.  That's the part of the question I'm unclear on as to what you mean.

As for robots.txt versus canonical, it depends on what you're trying to do. If you want the search engines to ignore it, use robots.txt to block it. Using a canonical tag simply tells search engines which page you prefer for it to use if there are multiple similar pages.

For instance, if you have 5 widget pages and they all have the same content, you would use a canonical tag to tell Google which one of those pages you would like for them to use to avoid all 5 pages potentially being seen as duplicate content.  It knows those pages are there, but you tell it which one to consider when it's crawling your site. That's a simplified explanation, but essentially how it's used.

So if you want Google to ignore the index.php page, a canonical tag is not the option you want.

[NakulGoyal]

I would just canonical it to the right URL and for every other URL that might be generated in multiple ways. You should definitely not do a robots.txt block.

[ciznerguy]

Thanks Chris

the site is a magento site.

and the page was cached by Google. my goal is to transfer any importance that Google sees in the page to the home page.

I hope the question is clearer

[irvingw]

it sounds like your arre talkng about the homepage having a duplicate page with index.php. If that is the case then 301 redirect it to the real homepage URL.

You can request the URL to be removed from Googles index in your WMT account too which is a good idea because as it sits now you have two pages that are identical indexed in google.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

Yes, then it that case, you would want to use a canonical tag indicating which page Google should focus on. If the page is defunct or not used anymore, then do as Irving suggests and 301 it.  Good luck.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

Yes, then it that case, you would want to use a canonical tag indicating which page Google should focus on. If the page is defunct or not used anymore, then do as Irving suggests and 301 it.  Good luck.