OK - thank you, good to know.

Thank you Linda. My first reaction was why not incentivize authorities within particular industries to comment and answer questions on such a sites with link juice, but it makes sense now that people would try to take advantage

And I guess it would asking too much for publishers of such forums/review sites to give link juice for approved authors...? Maybe then I'm think more of a reputable news publication...

_Cindy

right of course nofollow
thank you.

OK thank you - that helps clarify my questions. So while the link may not carry weight if you were to gain traffic to the website, along with smart link building, that could be of help. If I'm understanding your response.

Thanks again - much appreciated!

_Cindy

And what about other sites like quora or other niche forums/blogs where one might leave answers, with a link to their profile, which has a link back to the owner's website?

_Cindy

Vijay,

Thank you for sending the link. I did read google's info about the default setting and thought adding index.htm(l) would actually remove it, as say permalinks feature does, not add it.

My default page setting is clear now and I'm just wondering how long it will take to get clean urls, since this does seem to be the issue.

I guess I could create a filter in GA, but lunametrics provides examples to add the index.htm(l) or .php and I would want to remove it, if possible, and my regex is not up to speed here.

But I do believe this default page is the issue and will get back to you.

thanks again! _Cindy

ThompsonPaul,

Thank you! I've looked at that feature so many times, and read and reread the info Google provided, and clearly reading this information literally, as someone at my level would, it really doesn't specify whether adding the default page "adds" index.htm(l) to the url and therefore combines all "same-pages" or if it removes it to combine "same-pages"

-- and I assumed the later since that is what happens with permalinks in WP... go figure. Now I realize it adds. Also it didn't occur to me that this feature wouldn't act as a filter would and you would see the results right away.

OK so I have removed "index.htm" from the default page field, it is all clear now. Additionally I am also showing appended to my url's an "index.html" -- and this is in addition the actual url. So I am seeing, for example:

/about-us/   /about-us/index.htm   and in some cases urls like /about-us/index.html.

I can only guess that at one time both of these default urls were in the default page setting... "index.html" and "index.htm" And anyway these pages with index.htm(l) do not exist, ...which would explain that right, likely this issue concerns settings in GA

1. So one more perplexing issue - in the search console landing page report I am showing 0 hits for any url appended with either index.htm or index.html.

2. But in the regular reporting of landing pages, and also custom reporting, these pages are showing hits (pages appended w index.htm(l)). What could cause this discrepancy?

3. As you suggestion it would take a bit of filtering to clean up these url's in Google Analytics? And so if it is in Google Analytics then any redirect in the htaccess file is for naught?

4. So a several weeks, likely for this small business site, to begin showing clean urls and to see if this is actually this issue?

Thank you so very much!

_Cindy

Thomas, thank you for your help. I did occur to me that perhaps the order of items in the htaccess file may be the issue.

I am going to look into this issue - thanks to your suggestion, and then see if my redirects are working as they should.

When I do, I'll get back to you on this topic.

Now, I'm trying to wrap my mind around the issue of why "index.htm and index html" when my site is WP based and therefore a PHP framework. ThompsonPaul has responded with what was my next look (and actually a 4th to 8th look) concerning the default page setting in GA.

Thanks again.
_Cindy

Hi Thomas,

Very much appreciate your reponse.

So far none of the redirects are working, including your suggestion. So I tested the htaccess file with this redirect, changing one of the redirects already listed in the htaccess file for some time now, which use to work...

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^dupontservicecenter.com/buying-and-selling$
    RewriteRule ^$ http://dupontservicecenter.com/rewards/auto-service-credit [L,R=301]

...not working, is redirecting to the old url, the one I changed.

I have purged cache (using litespeed cache for wp since I'm on a litespeed server these days). Could it be a purge issue? What would cause the htaccess file not to work properly?

The only redirect that is working is through a plugin for wp - quick redirects which uses the wp_redirect() function.

Totally lost in a haystack.

Any further suggestions would be helpful, otherwise, a complete, timely, breakdown of all website components will have to be proposed to the client.

_Cindy

It has come to my attention with one of my clients (WordPress website) that for some time they have within their Landing Page report (of GA - Google Analytics) URLs that should all be pointing to the one page, example:

domain.com/about-us, also has a listing in GA as domain.com/about-us/index.htm

Is this some kind of indication of a subdirectory issue? Has anyone had experience with this in such wordpress plugins as Yoast SEO, or other SEO plugin?

My thoughts here are to simply redirect any of these non-existent files with a redirect in .htaccess - but what I'm using isn't working. I will insert the redirect here - - and any help would be greatly appreciated.

RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html?
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html?$ http://www.dupontservicecenter.com/$1 [R=301,L]

and this rewrite doesn't work:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.+).htm$ http://dupontservicecenter.com/$1.php [R,NC]

_Cindy

I am still grappling with this "index.htm" issue - appended on all urls, and sometimes the correct url is listed along with it, ex:

/about-us   and also     /about-us/index.htm

I've manually added the UA code to my header file in wordpress. I removed the plugin that was previously configuring the GA account.

In GA for such Acquisition reports as 'Adwords|Final URLs' and 'Search Console|Landing Pages' and 'Social|Landing Pages' the urls are listed properly with NO index.htm.

But all urls listed within the Behavior reports, mostly that would be 'Site Content' all append the index.htm.

Could it be the Inbound Landing Page plugin, which I can not turn off for how long to see results? Is there something in the .htaccess file I should look for?

Additionally I am setting up a ghost spam filter in GA (through the hostname dimension in the Network report - article by Carlos Escalera in the Moz Blog) and I see the UA code for the property listed there - why would this be in that report? Related in any way?

Still in search mode and any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

site in question: dupontservicecenter.com

_Cindy

I have used google tag assistant  - showing no issues.

I deleted the WordPress plugin (monster insights) and manually inserted GA code in header file.

Still I am getting "index.htm" appended to end of all urls in Google Analytics.

It doesn't seem to be effecting the metrics in GA, but still would like to know why this is happening on this one client site and not other client sites where I have those sites setup the same.

could it be another plugin?

Can I filter out the "index.htm" for the entire property so that the urls read correctly? If so, is this an acceptable solution?

in GA admin | view | view settings | default page I have inserted "index.htm" but this has no effect.

any help again would be greatly appreciated.

the site in question: dupontservicecenter

Thank you Martijn. I was going to use filters to eliminate the "index.htm" - but I need to understand what's different here; my other sites are not experiencing this issue, without adding a filter in GA, so why then is this one site, and will it effect the metrics?

The only difference between this site setup is that the client was using, and wanted to continue using, Yoast Google Analytics... (now monster insights plugin) - so maybe that's it, my trackers?

here's the site dupontservicecenter.com

Very much appreciate your help.

_Cindy

I don't have this issue with other wordpress websites, only this one website, and I don't know what's causing the issue:

Google Analytics is adding an "index.htm" to every single page on the website.  So it is tracking the pages, I see no errors - is it tracking the right page? When I click on the page link in a report, I naturally go to a "404 page not found" since the website address isn't "www.example.com/rewards/index.htm" - but instead the actual address would be:
"www.example.com/rewards/".

I have navigated to View Settings in GA to insure "default page" is empty. Although adding anything else to this field does not effect the page url in analytics reports either.

Could it be htaccess file - or a plugin effecting the htaccess file?_Cindy