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Yes for both questions. Maintining the N.A.P(Name, Phone, Address) with your google places page and your website and with all local directories and basically all web properties are crucial for ranking, as it shown here  by David Mihm. Having your NAP on other web properties are called "Citations" and these are considered like links to your actual website. so the more you have uniformed NAP citations accross multiple web properties will increase rankings.

Hi Challen, The following code should remove all index.html from any page you go to but I recommend you get someone who is comfortable working with .htaccess files since you can do some damage if you don't do thing correct.  Plus not all code in .htaccess files works the same on every server.  So if the code in the other few answer doesn't work and neither does mine, it may be something to do with your host and you may need to check with them. Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /index.html\ HTTP [NC] RewriteRule (.*)index.html$ /$1 [R=301,L] Casey