Deleting default.apsx when home.aspx is used in SharePoint 2010 Team Site

After creating a new team site, I've noticed there's a default.aspx siting at the root of the site and there also home.aspx under sitepages.  I know home.aspx is the default page and is being used by the new team site, so I'm curious as to the need for default.aspx and whether I can delete it.

I ask this because the crawler is picking up default.aspx and placing it in the index.   As a result, users (owners of the team site that was created) are seeing default.aspx in search results and clicking on it.  As you can imagine, they're not going where they think their going and get concerned.  It's creating tickets in support as a result. 

Here's a bit more on this scenario:

• Let's say a user (site owner) stands up (creates) a team site and calls it "Company Team Site".   They spend hours customizing and changing things on the new team site.  In a day or so, a peer (another site owner) searches for a site by name using "Company Team Site".  In the search results, the peer get results for both default.aspx and home.aspx with the same title "Company Team Site".  Because the user sees both links (one to default.aspx and one to home.aspx) with the exact same title, they sometimes click default.aspx and, as you can imagine, it sends the user to a page that does not show all their hours of hard work and customizations.  They freak out.  "Help deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesk!  My site is gone!".   That kind of stuff.  You know?

So to prevent the unused default.aspx from being picked up by the crawler and creating havoc for help desk, can I delete default.aspx and rely on home.aspx located under sitepages from then on?  

If not, is there a way to mark the file so it will not be crawled and indexed?

Best regards,

Mike Griffin - Seattle, WA