The Trouble with Meta Refresh - common search engine gaffes #1

by Nicholas Johnson

There are a number of ways to redirect a user to a new URL. The best way is to use the 301 "page permanently moved" header status code. Another way is to use a "meta refresh" tag. There are several reasons why you should use the former rather than the latter wherever possible.

Meta refresh is a meta tag in your html head section which tells the users browser to get a new file. The meta refresh tag looks line this:

It is quite important that you NEVER EVER USE THIS TAG! There are three reasons for this, which will badly hurt your search enginge rankings, your usability, and your credibility as a webmaster.

Firstly, meta refresh used to be a favourite technique of Blackhat SEO spammers who would create a keyword stuffed landing page for the search engines, then use meta refresh to redirect real human users to a new and less relevent page. For a while sites which did this enjoyed disproportionately high rankings with pretty much any keywords they chose. The major search engines quickly saw what was happening though and banned the offenders from their listings. Even today, meta refresh is still apparently viewed with suspicion by search engines. Trust me, I'm speaking from bitter experience here. If you use meta refresh you will not be able to bring your page rank and inbound links over from your old URL or domain!

Secondly meta refresh breaks the back button on many older browsers. Clicking back moves the user to the page containing the refresh which then returns the user to the page where they started. Some unscrupulous sites used to use long chains of meta refresh pages to drive the user into a deep well from which there was no escape but to close the browser or type a new URL into the address bar. Some of these browsers are still in use today and for people using them meta refresh is a headache.

Thirdly, using the meta refresh timout feature is an accessibility issue for users with certain disabilities. Meta Refresh contains a handy feature which allows you to redirect the user after a short period of time. This is meant to allow users time to read your carefully crafted text about how you have changed your name and are now trading under the name of bogginsandsmith.com. For people using screen readers this is an issue because the page disappears without warning, often in the middle of the text and moves somewhere else.

For these reasons I would suggest using 301 redirects in all cases where it's possible to do so. For mor information on using a 301 redirect see How to move a web page without losing search rankings using a 301 redirect.