Redirection 302/301 on subfolders

[seoapprentice]

First of all, I'm very new to SEO, so if this seems to be elementary please forgive me.

This may not be an issue, but I was playing around with the http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html utility and noticed that my subdirectories are redirecting using 302 if the trailing slash wasn't used in the url. eg. www.mysite.com/subfolder would 302 redirect to www.mysite.com/subfolder/.

So, just to see if that was normal I tried the httpview utility on searchenginewatch.com/blogs and found that it does a 301 permanent redirect to searchenginewatch.com/blogs/. I'm using IIS, and SEW is on Apache. Does Apache do this automagically? Can IIS?

Would this, could this be a dup problem or split links issue if some linked with and some without? When I do a link:www.mysite.com/subfolder in google I found I get a different IBL count than when I do link:www.mysite.com/subfolder/

Does Google/Yahoo!/MSN group those as being the same? Am I just paranoid?

Thanks in advance!

[seoapprentice]

I'm coming to the conclusion that either that was a really dumb question, or a really good one. Any input is appreciated.

Thanks!

[seomike]

Not a dumb question at all. Only thing is I don't know how to do a 301 in IIS without pulling up the server remotely and using the iis interface ext. and still then it's been a few years lol. Apache lets you upload an .htaccess file to your root folder that gives you programming control over redirects ext.

Most redirects by default are 302 so you definitely have to change them to a 301 or risk hijacking your own site pages. I'd do a google search for IIS 301 redirects and see if there is a tutorial to walk you through the process.

[seoapprentice]

Thanks for the reply!

I know how to do a 301 in IIS (rather a pain), but my real question is do I need to for such a case as subdirectory slashes? Should this be a worry since it is a default setting (302 vs 301)?

Until proven otherwise I'm assuming it is a worry, or my IBL research mentioned above wouldn't have differing results. But now I would have to create a virtual directory for every subdirectory and 301 it to "directory name/". That could be a nightmare to setup/maintain.