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
-
Current Sitelinks Refresh/Removal timeframe?
Hi All, Did good chunk of research here prior to posting on sitelinks. Tried the Webmaster Console to remove the links Tried removing via sitemap, WP SEO plugin removal Now removed unnecessary pages, and redirected to homepage. Re petitioned for removal via Webmaster Google Console area. Whats been the recent conservative realistic estimate of when sitelinks will be removed/refreshed? Also any tricks to expedite recrawl or re build of sitelinks. The site has very low traffic SMB that uses site purely for portfolio and no ranking/traffic purposes. so maybe the priority is very low for this site. Back in the day sitelinks were a lot easier to manage or so it seems. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmialik1 -
Has Anyone Encountered This Old Meta Tag and Know It's Past Function?
name="url" content="http://www.mysite.com/"> I've never personally seen it used until I saw a site using it this past weekend...I cannot find any old documentation on the purpose if this tag either.Any insights or direction would truly appreciated!Many thanks, T 😎
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talexanderyano0 -
UK version of site showing US Cache and meta description
Hi Fellow Moz'ers We seem to have an issue where some of our UK site is showing meta descriptions from our US site in the serp's and when you check the cache: of the site it's brining up the .com instead of the .co.uk site. example: cache:https://www.tinyme.co.uk/name-labels shows the US site We've checked the href lang tags and they look ok to me (but i'm not an expert) https://www.tinyme.co.uk/name-labels" hreflang="en-gb"/> https://www.tinyme.com/name-labels" hreflang="en-us"/> https://www.tinyme.com.au/name-labels" hreflang="x-default" /> https://www.tinyme.com.au/name-labels" hreflang="en-au"/> We've had a search around and seen people have similar issues, but cant seem to find a definitive solution.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tinyme1 -
Sreaming Frog vs. Yoast - meta description clash
Hi all, I'm working on a site where when I crawl it with SF, SF doesn't pick up on the meta description (as in the source code it IS blank). However, the meta description has been set via the Yoast Wordpress plugin and it does exist in the source code and is shown in the SERPs. The code looks like this: <title>Dining Table and Chairs set</title> So my question is: will this be affecting SEO and how the website is ranking if all the actual are blank? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1591 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Canonical Meta Tag
Can someone explain how this works and how necessary is it? For example, I have a new client, who is ranking WITHOUT the www in their domain, but they have a good deal of backlinks already that have www in it. When I set up google webmaster tools I made 2, one for WWW and one for WITHOUT and there are diffenet numbers of backlinks for each. I have no idea what do about this or if I should even do anything. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Robots.txt is blocking Wordpress Pages from Googlebot?
I have a robots.txt file on my server, which I did not develop, it was done by the web designer at the company before me. Then there is a word press plugin that generates a robots.txt file. How Do I unblock all the wordpress pages from googlebot?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ENSO0 -
Blog not showing up when searching for exact post/META titles
I am working on a blog http://www.possessionista.com which is a very popular fashion blog. It is very well established with a 100% natural link profile and zero spammy stuff. The blog ranks #1 for random fashion terms like "kourtney kardashian cat eye sunglasses" and "emily maynard boots". The problem I am experiencing is that none of the actual titles of her posts or any of the content in the post results in her blog showing up if searched. EX: http://www.possessionista.com/2011/10/pippa-middletons-zip-jacket.html When you search "Pippa Middleton's Zip Jacket" on google her blog is nowhere to be found. Try searching allintitle:"Pippa Middleton's Zip Jacket" and she's nowhere to be found either. Even search "The other day, I met with my friend Kiran for our monthly mutual admiration society" on google and she's nowhere to be found even thoguh this is a unique snippet from her post. This post is already indexed and cached with the above mentioned details. i've also tested dozens of older posts as well. Same issue. You can actually do this to see a more clear picture: Do a google search for: allintitle:Bachelorette Fashion: Episode 2 - Ashley Hebert Brown site:possessionista.com That will bring up her blog which means google recognizes that the phrase is in her META title. Now do a google search for: allintitle:Bachelorette Fashion: Episode 2 - Ashley Hebert Brown without the site: included. She does not pop up but other people do. I did find that she had a duplicate title tag for a few weeks, but I've fixed that. Her posts used to pop up #1 when you search the title, but now obviously not. I am kind of at a loss and have tried a bunch of options with no success. Oh, one other thing is that some people do scrape her content, but only a few like maybe 10 and they've always been doing it even when she used to rank for her own post titles. Have you guys experienced this issue? Do you have any ideas of how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | modparent0