Let's Say http://www.example.com = Pagerank 5 http://www.example.com/index.php = Pagerank 2 Will this mean that directing everything to example.com using the htaccess will increase pagerank? Might be wishful thinking but it seems like the index.php was taking up 2 pagerank points from the main site. Hope I didnt lose anybody...and thoughts will be appreciated.
Haven't tested this personally, just something I read from several "gurus" http:// example.com http:// example.com/index.php www. example.com www. example.com/index.php Are four completely different pages in the eyes of a search engine. So it would make sense that the PR of your website gets distributed to the non-canonical versions as well. Again, it's just an "it would make sense" opinion On a sidenote. On one of my websites, I haven't fixed the .htaccess yet and I noticed that in all four of the versions above, I have a PR of 2, although only 1 of the versions (the www) has links.
It will "consolidate" PageRank to the one URL, it is possible it will help increase your PageRank slightly but don't think because you have a PR5 on one and a PR2 on the other you will get a 7 because it doesn't work like that.
Yeah I know a pagerank 7 is a little too much, but Im sure i can achieve a 6 with this migration...I also know not to be too obsessed with Pagerank but there is so much talk about Canonical.
Not sure how PR is distributed if you don't have a canonical domain, but I'm pretty sure it hurts you if you have 4 pages with the same content. At least that's why I'm trying to fix my canonical.