title: SEO - Redirect Homepage or Root URL - Trailing Slash
body: <p>Does anyone know if Google will punish a site if the homepage (with or without the trailing slash) returns a 200 ok header response?</p>
  
  <p>I have tested tons of sites using an online redirect checker (CNN, NY Times, FOX News, Wikipedia, etc...) and they all return 200 "ok" with or without the trailing slash. </p>
  
  <p>I know all inner pages need to use one or the other, but it appears the homepage is an exception. What do you all think?</p>
  
  <p>PS, I'm using URLRewrite in IIS7 to force www, lowercase, and remove trailing slashes. It seems the homepage is the only page not affected by the trailing slash rule. </p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>
  For example, using this online tool: <a href="http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/" rel="nofollow">http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/</a>
  The following URLs are "Direct Links". Neither is a 301 redirect...
  <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.wikipedia.org</a>
  http://www.wikipedia.org/</p>
  
  <p>Numerous other examples produce the same results. </p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT 2</strong>
  Here is my URLRewrite code (web.config)</p>
  
  <pre><code>    &lt;rules&gt;
          &lt;rule name="CanonicalHostNameRule1" stopProcessing="true"&gt;
              &lt;match url="(.*)" /&gt;
              &lt;conditions&gt;
                  &lt;add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^www\.domain\.com$" negate="true" /&gt;
              &lt;/conditions&gt;
              &lt;action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" url="http://www.kurtzandblum.com/{R:1}" /&gt;
          &lt;/rule&gt;
          &lt;rule name="LowerCaseRule1" stopProcessing="true"&gt;
              &lt;match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /&gt;
              &lt;action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /&gt;
          &lt;/rule&gt;
          &lt;rule name="Remove trailing slash" stopProcessing="true"&gt;
              &lt;match url="(.*)/$" /&gt;
              &lt;conditions&gt;
                  &lt;add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /&gt;
                  &lt;add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /&gt;
              &lt;/conditions&gt;
              &lt;action type="Redirect" redirectType="Permanent" url="{R:1}" /&gt;
          &lt;/rule&gt;
      &lt;/rules&gt;
  </code></pre>