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  4. Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?

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Meta Tag Force Page Refresh - Good or Bad?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • RichFinnSEO
    RichFinnSEO last edited by May 14, 2012, 4:19 PM

    I had recently come across a meta tag that could cause a auto refresh on a users browser when implemented.  I have been using it for a redesign and was curious if there could be any negative effects for using it, here is the code:

    All input is appreciated.

    Ciao,

    Todd Richard

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • KaneJamison
      KaneJamison last edited by May 14, 2012, 5:11 PM May 14, 2012, 5:07 PM

      I don't believe that tag causes an auto-refresh. Rather, it is used in combination with an auto-refresh to make sure that nothing is cached in the user's browser, which ensures that the entire page updated during the refresh.

      If I recall correctly, sending "no-cache" info in the http header is a better practice that using a meta tag. To quote from http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#META:

      "Meta tags are easy to use, but aren’t very effective. That’s because they’re only honored by a few browser caches, not proxy caches (which almost never read the HTML in the document). While it may be tempting to put a Pragma: no-cache meta tag into a Web page, it won’t necessarily cause it to be kept fresh."

      I couldn't say whether this would affect your page in terms of SEO, but I also don't think there's a reason to use the pragma tag anymore, so in my opinion, it's moot.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • RuthBurrReedy
        RuthBurrReedy last edited by May 14, 2012, 5:10 PM May 14, 2012, 5:02 PM

        Hi Todd,

        Using the Pragma no-cache tag means that no cached content from that page will be used when a user next accesses the page; the request will go back to the origin server instead.  It's useful when you have a frequently-updated page that you don't want users to end up seeing older versions of.  It's generally considered to be a bit of an outdated tag - you may want to explore using your HTTP headers to expire content instead - but won't hurt you with the search engines (or prevent the Cached version of your page from showing up in the SERPs).  Hope that helps!

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