Googlebot + Meta-Refresh
-
Quick question, can Googlebot (or other search engines) follow meta refresh tags? Does it work anything like a 301 in terms of passing value to the new page?
-
Sorry to say we're digging in the crates here... but one of the companies we acquired and took over full ownership of in May of this year had a site with no htaccess in standard html. I went meta refresh for my redirects.
I'm thinking if I verify the site in WMT and then acknowledge that is has been moved to our current domain, this should probably be the most legit way to inform GOOG that we made the move.
If anyone has any feedback that is more up to date, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!
-
Right. Meta-refresh was a common black hat technique for redirecting back in the late 90s and early 2000s so it has a bit of a stigma associated with it.
-
The best information I can find on the subject is 3 years old and from Yahoo.
My understanding is do a 301 if you can, if not do a meta refresh preferably with 0.
Also in 2007, Matt Cutts said this:
Matt Cutts: In general, Google does a relatively good job of following the 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes and JavaScript. Typically what we don't do would be to follow a chain of redirects that goes through a robots.txt that is itself forbidden.
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
Based on that discussion it is inferred that value is passed along.
-
Meta Refresh can pass link juice, according to Matt Cutts:
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
But as Ryan Purkey suggests, a 301 is the accepted best-practice here. With Meta Refresh you need to be careful to avoid looking like a black-hat to a picky google algorithm. Some more discussion here.
-
I fully understand that the 301 is the best option, i was interested if it had been published anywhere that meta-refreshes could pass any value or not?
I did some searching around and couldn't find any trust worthy articles. They only thing i found was that it wasn't suggested by SEOMoz and the W3C doesn't support it...
-
Search engines can read meta refresh, but the the standard practice for passing value is a 301 redirect as meta refresh can have other uses while a 301 is specifically for permanent redirection. Use the 301 if you want to pass value.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Important is Meta Description on Non-Entry Pages?
If a page is never used as an entry page to your website -- in other words it's an obscure, relatively unimportant page that never ranks high enough in the search engines to be in the first few pages of the search results for any significant number of searches -- does editing the META Description really have any significant benefit? I guess the question could also be phrased as, does the Google Search Algo factor in the META Description tag, or is it only used for display purposes on the search results and doesn't affect ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoJaz0 -
Pagination & duplicate meta
Hi I have a few pages flagged for duplicate meta e.g.: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches I can;t see anything wrong with the pagination & other pages have the same code, but aren't flagged for duplicate: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/coshh-cabinets?page=2 I can't see to find the issue - any ideas? Becky0 -
Google not taking Meta...
Hello all, So I understand that Google may sometimes take content from the page as a snippet to display on SERPs rather than the meta description, but my problem goes a little beyond that. I have a section on my site which updates everyday so a lot of the content is dynamics (products for a shop, every morning unique stock is added or removed), and despite having a meta description, title and receiving an 'A' grade in the MOZ on page grader, these pages never show up in Google. After a little research I did a 'site:www.mysite.com/productpage' in Google and this indeed listed all my products, but interestingly for every single one Google had taken the copyright notice at the bottom of the page as the snippet instead of the meta or any H1, H2 or P text on the page... Does anyone have any idea why Google is doing this? It would explain a lot to me in terms of overall traffic, I'm just out of ideas... Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HB170 -
Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Press Releases
We have a client that does multiple press releases a year. One issue we noticed is that every press release has the same meta description tag and the duplicates are starting to really add up. Unfortunately the client does not want to create specialized meta descriptions for new press releases due to legal restrictions (every new meta description must be reviewed). What should we do about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
What is the difference between link rel="canonical" and meta name="canonical"?
Hi mozzers, I would like to know What is the difference between link rel="canonical" and meta name="canonical"? and is it dangerous to have both of these elements combined together? One of my client's page has the these two elements and kind of bothers me because I only know link rel="canonical" to be relevant to remove duplicates. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Issue with Robots.txt file blocking meta description
Hi, Can you please tell me why the following error is showing up in the serps for a website that was just re-launched 7 days ago with new pages (301 redirects are built in)? A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. Once we noticed it yesterday, we made some changed to the file and removed the amount of items in the disallow list. Here is the current Robots.txt file: # XML Sitemap & Google News Feeds version 4.2 - http://status301.net/wordpress-plugins/xml-sitemap-feed/ Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap.xml Sitemap: http://www.website.com/sitemap-news.xml User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-includes/ Other notes... the site was developed in WordPress and uses that followign plugins: WooCommerce All-in-One SEO Pack Google Analytics for WordPress XML Sitemap Google News Feeds Currently, in the SERPs, it keeps jumping back and forth between showing the meta description for the www domain and showing the error message (above). Originally, WP Super Cache was installed and has since been deactivated, removed from WP-config.php and deleted permanently. One other thing to note, we noticed yesterday that there was an old xml sitemap still on file, which we have since removed and resubmitted a new one via WMT. Also, the old pages are still showing up in the SERPs. Could it just be that this will take time, to review the new sitemap and re-index the new site? If so, what kind of timeframes are you seeing these days for the new pages to show up in SERPs? Days, weeks? Thanks, Erin ```
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HiddenPeak0 -
Dynamic numbers in meta title - can it harm SEO?
We are creating an online shop with thousands of products. And i want to put total product number in index title, each day/week it will increase. This would be interesting for visitors to see. But would be it be good for SEO? For example title: "Brand - Buy Toys Online, We Have More Than 10659".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Duplicate Title Tags & Duplication Meta Description after 301 Redirect
Today, I was checking my Google webmaster tools and found 16,000 duplicate title tags and duplicate meta description. I have investigate for this issue and come to know about as follow. I have changed URL structure for 11,000 product pages on 3rd July, 2012 and set up 301 redirect from old product pages to new product pages. Google have started to crawl my new product pages but, De-Indexing of old URLs are quite slower. That's why I found this issue on Google webmaster tools. Can anyone suggest me, How can I increase ratio of De-Indexing for old URLs? OR any other suggestions? How much time Google will take to De-Index old URLs from web search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0