one last seo puzzle

[blade007]

on the index.php, where everyone first arrives, someone had setup a redirect. so that index.php consisted of 3 lines of code, redirecting to a sub page.

I've repopulated index.php with the start page but can't help thinking it was doing something (in a negative way)

Personally, I thought this was sabotage

the site never achieved good rankings

any ideas why?

 

[Beansprout]

If the redirect was done in Javascript then the SEs won't have followed it.

Either way redirecting on the index page probably isn't a very good idea

 

[blade007]

it was a php redirect, and on further investigation it was what's called a

a "302 php redirection"

<?php
header("Location: http://www.domain.com/temporary-address/temporary-file-name.html"); 
?>

this was it, exactly it (i'm saying that coz I'm at home and don't have it in front of me)

now, apparently this is BAD. for some reason .. still investigating

 

[Beansprout]

302 is, as that new URL suggests, a temporary redirect. SEs much prefer 301 Moved Permanently because then they know which page to really look at, and that there's no duplication/spamming going on