default.html??

[rick_dallas]

I'm new at this so feel free to snicker :) but my website has a typical .com name with no /default.html. However, my default.html is the file I modify to make changes to the home page. Does the server see these pagse as one and the same? I don't think so because my google ranking on my home page is a 2 but on my default.html page it is a 4. The pages look identical but what gives?? Do I need to change something. Am I going about this wrong? Thanks for the advice and I'm sure some of you will get a good laugh!! :D

Oh and all of my internal links point back to the default.html page..........

[Stephen Philbin]

Nobody can but the people from Google themselves could say with absolute certainty exactly what goes on with how google "sees" the web, but there is a pretty good chance that google "sees" your main page as two seperate pages (because it can be found by the two distinctly seperate addresses) and so probably will have two seperate sections in its database for each address (and thus split the rank).

[felgall]

Is default.html the default file name for when one isn't specified or does your site have the more common index.html as the default and you have set up a second page with the same content?

[rick_dallas]

There is not an index.html in my directory. But you're getting close to answering my question. Is there a default name assigned to a domain name for the home page that I just can't see?? Again, modifying default.html changes my home page even though in the url search bar, it does not mention default.html.

That's what I'm trying to get a better understanding of. Just trying to see how all of this works.

[Stephen Philbin]

The way the Apache web server figures out which file it should dish out if no file name is specified, is that there's an instruction in its main configuration file that tells it which files to look for and serve if none is asked for. traditionally it is "index.html", but a whole series of them can be set.

For example in my Apache config file, I have the directive
DirectoryIndex index.php index.ste index.doot index.xml index.html index.html.var
. this means that if no file is asked for, then it'll serve up index.php. If there isn't a file called index.php in the directory, then it'll look for index.ste and serve that, if it can't find that either, then it'll move to the next one in the list and try that until it finds a file specified in the list that it can serve. If it runs out of options and if it is permitted, then a list of the files in the directory will be displayed instead.