SEO gone mad...

[steve]

On 10/14/2015 08:47 AM, nanaya wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015, at 04:39 AM, steve wrote:
>> As can be seen from the google article, it's apparently a bad thing(tm)
>> to duplicate content for example.com/ and example.com. Apparently some
>> .htaccess tweak can do a 301 redirect from one to the other, but
>> absolutely nothing that has been suggested ( or others that allegedly
>> work - like redirecting ^/(.*)/ ) does actually work with nginx, which
>> is exactly what I expected to happen.
>>
> I don't know how you can miss this which has been quoted before:
>
> ```
> Rest assured that for your root URL specifically, http://example.com is
> equivalent to http://example.com/ and can’t be redirected even if you’re
> Chuck Norris.
> ```
>
> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
>
> _______________________________________________
>
When your customer states categorically that it is a problem, then it is 
my job to investigate.

Not being interested in the pseudoscience that is SEO, I have to do my 
research starting pretty close to the bottom of the ladder.

  - first to attempt to replicate what they swear is being done in 
apache ( as defined in the above quoted article ), and
  - second ( once I've proved to myself that it isn't possible - and 
there's plenty of articles on google saying it is! ), to see whether it 
actually matters.

And the answer is... no it doesn't matter and that's what the canonical 
headers are for.

Now I know this, I can get back to the enjoyable task of making nginx 
run faster and more securely than ever!

Steve

-- 
Steve Holdoway BSc(Hons) MIITP
http://www.greengecko.co.nz
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveholdoway
Skype: sholdowa