Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How safe is it to use a meta-refresh to hide the referrer?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How safe is it to use a meta-refresh to hide the referrer?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    1
    1
    502
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Ibis15
      Ibis15 last edited by

      Hi guys,

      So I have a review site and I'm affiliated with several partnership programs whose products I advertise on my site. I don't want these affiliate programs to see the source of my traffic (my site), so I'm looking for a safe solution to hide the referrer URL.

      I have recently added a rel="noreferrer" tag to all my affiliate links, but this method isn't perfect as not all browsers respect that rule. After doing some research and checking my competitors I noticed that some of them use meta-refresh, which seems more reliable in this regard.

      So, how safe is it to use meta-refresh as means of hiding referrer URL? I'm worrying that implementing a meta-refresh redirect might negatively affect my SEO. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to hide the referrer URL without damaging SEO?

      Thank you.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • 1 / 1
      • First post
        Last post

      Got a burning SEO question?

      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


      Start my free trial


      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.

      • See all categories

      Related Questions

      • jonmc

        Translating meta tags using WPML and AIO SEO

        Having a heck of a time finding info on this one... We're working on a multilingual website which uses WPML. I've used the All in One SEO plugin to customize meta data (title, description, etc). These strings do not appear in the list of translations in WPML. Does anyone have any experience with this setup? How do you enable WPML to translate meta data set via the AIO plugin? Thanks!

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jonmc
        0
      • Choice

        How many images should I use in structured data for a product?

        We have a basic printing website that offers business cards. Each type of business card has a few product images. Should we use structured data for all the images, or just the main image? What is your opinion about this? Thanks in advance.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice
        0
      • ostesmorbrod

        Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical

        A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page  is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod
        0
      • seowork214

        Using the same image across the site?

        Hi just wondering i'm using the same image across 20 pages which are optimized for SEO purposes. I was wondering is there issues with this from SEO standpoint? Will Google devalue the page because the same image is being used? Cheers.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork214
        0
      • Chammy

        Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?

        Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy
        0
      • dancape

        Using the same content on different TLD's

        HI Everyone, We have clients for whom we are going to work with in different countries but sometimes with the same  language. For example we might have a client in a competitive niche working in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Swiss German) ie we're going to potentially rewrite our website three times in German, We're thinking of using Google's href lang tags and use pretty much the same content - is this a safe option, has anyone actually tries this successfully or otherwise? All answers appreciated. Cheers, Mel.

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape
        1
      • Kung_fu_Panda

        Using href lang tag for multi-regional targeting on the same page

        Hi, I have the site au.example.com and I ranked on google AustraliaI would like to be ranked also in Google New Zeland for the same page (au.example.com) Because they are geographically & culturally close Can I place href lang tag for both countries and present the same page The code should look like: OR should i have create a different page for New Zealand (for eample: http://au.example.com/EN-NZ) And the code will look like: What will work better or there is other solution? Hope I’m clear.. Thanks!

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda
        0
      • Omnipress

        Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?

        I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
        http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: http://www.omnipress.com/boss-man" /> With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!

        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
        0

      Get started with Moz Pro!

      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

      Start my free trial
      Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz API
      • Moz Data
      • STAT
      • Product Updates
      Moz Solutions
      • SMB Solutions
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Digital Marketers
      Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Authority Checker
      • Link Explorer
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • Brand Authority Checker
      • Local Citation Checker
      • MozBar Extension
      • MozCast
      Resources
      • Blog
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Help Hub
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • How-to Guides
      • Moz Academy
      • API Docs
      About Moz
      • About
      • Team
      • Careers
      • Contact
      Why Moz
      • Case Studies
      • Testimonials
      Get Involved
      • Become an Affiliate
      • MozCon
      • Webinars
      • Practical Marketer Series
      • MozPod
      Connect with us

      Contact the Help team

      Join our newsletter
      Moz logo
      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
      • Accessibility
      • Terms of Use
      • Privacy

      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.