I have recently published www.realorganizingsolutions.com site and also included Google Analytics on the pages.

The problem is that Google is reporting in a "phantom" page which it calls "/" This resolves to www.realorganizingsolutions.com/

Google additionally wants to report on www.realorganizingsolutions.com/index as an entirely separate "page" - which of course it is not - it is the same page as "/"

when I look at other sites I have built using hand coding, the "/index" NEVER shows up on the url address bar when you go to the home page.

clearly I am doing something wrong here for Google to report 2 home pages when in fact they are the same. I can not for the life of me figure out what it is. I have checked the public directory and there is only the index page - nothing else which could be confused for it.


Any ideas anyone ?

Many thanks Vincej

This is how the index page works. browsers are all configured to read "index.html, index.htm, " as your "root" page. This is unlike any other page you have because unlike your "aboutus.html" page, when you upload "index.html" it simply attaches to your root (or your domain name). When you see the symbol "/", this is referring to your "root directory". When you see "index.html", this is referring to your actual home page. It is not clear to me why google is displaying your root symbol. Do you have any sub-directories? Does google display different information for both your "index" and "/" files?

I believe he has a good handle on how web servers index a directory.

the thing I find confusing is if for example you navigate around coffecup.com and then return back to the homepage the url is still coffeecup.com .... it is not coffeecup/index.com

In my case it becomes /index.com

This gives rise to Google reporting "/" AND /index

How does Coffeecup never show the /index on it's url ??

Many thanks vincej

Replace index.html with a / in all the links for your home page and index.html will not display in the address bar.

like eric says - / or the root is the page you arrive at by default when you only type the domain name in the address bar - it just happens to be the same page as index.html or index.php or whichever style index page you use, which the server defaults to when no page name is entered...

i guess google is just differentiating between arrivals at the domain name address and clicks back to the home page from other pages that say index.html on the menus

you could try adjusting your menus to just point back at the domain name for links to the home page if you want them all the same

Yea, its is also possible that not all of your links are using the same callback address when they return to your home page.

I'm telling you it's how the link is formed.

If the link back to your home page is index.html, then the address bar will display http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html when the link is clicked.

If the link back to your home page is /, then the address bar will display http://www.yourdomain.com when the link is clicked.

Of course this is the root of your server and will direct back to the index page in the root directory. To get this to work in a sub-directory, you just modify it to /yourfolder/ omitting the index.html.

And you can't test this on your local PC, it has to be on the server.

...and just to confuse the issue, in most url addresses you can just write "mywebsite.com" or whatever in the address bar, without having to add the www. etc. in front. As has been explained, according to whether you are arriving from a link, or entering the site from the "front door", the browser will visually present slightly different information. However, inside the guts of the site there will be a lot more which will be picked up by the analytics.

so i'm presuming linking back with ./ is the same as / ?