Crawl errors in Webmaster tools, missing index.html

[theDaveB]

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In the crawl errors in webmaster tools it says there are is a problem with my index.html.

When I click into that section it says there are 24 links pointing to index.html (all external links) but the file doesn't exist.

Index.html doesn't exist on my site but index.asp does. When I check any of the 24 links they are pointing to my domain and not directly pointing at index.html

Firstly why does Google assume am using index.html ?

Secondly should I do a 301 redirect from index.html to index.asp ?

Cheers,

Dave

[morleymouse]

301 it yes.

Theres something in the .htaccess file that states the order of defaults:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi index.php index.asp

If you haven't added this or made changes to it html might be the default. Reads left to right, so just make sure index.asp is the first on read so its the default

[tulipkiya]

I beleieve every browser and google as well finds root file as per herarrichy......

of Index.html
index.xhtml
index.cgi
index.php
index.asp

so some time it may happen it does not find a index file.
I too agree go for 301.

[ritusingh]

hi .......


301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

[theDaveB]

Cheers.

I have done a 301 on index.html seems weird though how google decided that was my default page when it doesn't even exist.

Gonna go through my .htaccess file as well and remove any index files apart from .asp

Dave