Google: We Recommend You Not Use Meta-Refresh

Jul 21, 2011 - 8:35 am 3 by

meta refreshGoogler, JohnMu said in a Google Webmaster Help thread that you are better off not using the meta refresh HTML tag.

In response to why one webmaster was seeing unusual error reports in Google Webmaster Tools, John noticed the site was using the meta refresh tag. In response, he said:

In general, we recommend not using meta-refresh type redirects, as this can cause confusion with users (and search engine crawlers, who might mistake that for an attempted redirect). This is likely where the warning you saw came from. This is currently not causing any problems with regards to crawling, indexing, or ranking, but it would still be a good idea to remove that.

John made a point to say that this is not impacting his rankings or crawling but he did recommend the site remove the meta tag.

There are many sites out there that use it, for no real good reason, so if you do, maybe drop it.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

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