META Refresh And Search Engines

[minstrel]

I came across this article while searching for something else: Use of the META REFRESH tag is one way to let visitors and spiders know when a website or individual webpage has moved. However, the referenced article points out some dangers of this method. In particular, note the recommendation for not using a "refresh" time of less than 10 (or maybe even 30) seconds.

META Refresh And Search Engines
Larisa Thomason, Senior Web Analyst, NetMechanic, Inc

When you change your web site address or a file name on your site, you have to spread the word to visitors, other sites that link to yours, and search engines. Many webmasters use the META refresh tag to send visitors to the correct address until everyone's links are updated. But most don't know that innocent use of that tag may significantly lower your page rank or even get you banned in some search engines.

How It Works
The META refresh tag tells the browser to automatically request another page from the server after a certain number of seconds. This is also called "redirecting" because you're sending the visitor to a page other than they one they requested.

Redirecting works like this: when visitors click on a Web page that contains a META refresh tag inside the HEAD section, they're sent to a different page without actually clicking on a link. This is called page side redirection.

Here's the syntax:

<META http-equiv="refresh" content="2;
URL=http://www.newsite.com/">

This META tag will send a visitor to the new URL after 2 seconds. You can set the timing to 0 seconds and have it jump immediately or set it for 30 seconds or longer.

Uses And Abuses
The META refresh is an easy way to make sure that visitors see the correct page. There are legitimate reasons for using the tag, but search engine spiders usually don't spend a lot of time evaluating them. Often, they'll leave as soon as they encounter a refresh attribute because it's a spammer favorite.

...

This type of abuse led some search engines to ban sites that use redirects. AltaVista is the most strict: sites with the refresh attribute set to less than 30 seconds have been banned as spam. The policy of other search engines varies. In the past, Google hasn't been too worried about spam since it relies mainly on link popularity to rank sites - but it does plan to institute stricter policies later this year.

Alternatives To META Refresh
If you do use the META refresh attribute on pages you want indexed, set it to at least 10 seconds.

Server side redirection is a better way to ensure that visitors can still find your Web pages after you make changes because there are no spamming penalties associated with it. The most common use of server site redirects is to send visitors to a custom error document when they enter an invalid URL.

Although it's a safer, more elegant solution, server side redirection is more technically demanding than using META tag or JavaScript redirects. But it won't get you banned either! You'll need to edit your .htaccess file on your server.

If you're using a web host instead of running your own server (or an IIS/NT server), then the server administrator may have to make the change for you.

[Mel]

Nice article Minstrel,

the article mentions javascript redirects but does not mention that they work fine for browsers but do not work for spiders who cannot read JS.

Another and IMO better method for redirection is to use a server side redirect with a 301 tag which lets the spider know that the site has moved and to where.