Google has got the wrong homepage...

[thomase]

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Okay, so I got a really nice keyword domain for my site and it got listed on the first page for the search term I want as soon as they got around to viewing the site.

Problem is, at first I just had a static html site, then changed my mind to use wordpress. Now Google obviously got there quicker than I thought as they know the old pages exist. I've 301 redirected the others, but I cannot do this with the index.htm page - this causes a redirection loop error.

I tried to do some rename thing for the index file but couldn't get this to work (willing to try again).

Now, at the moment it displays a "cannot be found" page by wordpress.

I am a bit worried google will think the site has gone funny and just remove it from the index, rather than making domain.co.uk/ the homepage and not domain.co.uk/index.htm

I have resubmitted new sitemaps again with the homepage as domain.co.uk, but is there anything I can do to make google realise they need to remove the index.htm bit for the home page to display properly?

I'm hoping over the next week it will realise and naturally change it...but I'm worried that I might get penalised a bit - as well as it just looking rubbish for website visitors.

[desiny]

maybe you can use robots.txt to ignore?

I would suggest that resolving the redirection loop issue would be the best bet as a week is a long time and you could bomb quickly in that time.

It is amazing how quickly google indexes thsee days - especially when you dont want it to!

I know never publish a site until it is at leadt 80% ready as I am sure that there is a 'first impression' rating on google that you get only one shot at. Im sure some will laugh at me but this is something I am sure of.

[thomase]

maybe you can use robots.txt to ignore?

I would suggest that resolving the redirection loop issue would be the best bet as a week is a long time and you could bomb quickly in that time.

The redirection loop error is fixed...the site wouldn't even display with it.

As for a robots.txt, I don't want to scare them off the homepage either :P

I'm hoping there's just some sort of redirect I can do which will safely make them realise to either change the .htm to .php or remove the index.htm bit all together.

At the time I thought the site was ready...then I decided it would be better to stick it into wordpress :P. Don't ask - was being indecisive and lazy.

Hopefully this can just be one of those things I worry about, but doesn't actually matter....*touch wood*

[trooperbill]

use urlrewriting to take the index.html page (or whatever) and push it to index.php... simples