How do search engines treat the meta refresh

Very interesting! I've never heard of or seen the canonical link in use anywhere. I'm a bit confused though: would I use the canonical link in addition to a meta refresh? Or instead of a meta refresh? Cross-domain canonicals are more of a "hint" rather than a directive for googlebot - there's a big difference. One diverts, one sign-posts. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.

Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Does ES6 make JavaScript frameworks obsolete? Podcast Do polyglots have an edge when it comes to mastering programming Images and video. Best practices for ecommerce in Search. COVID resources and tips. Quality guidelines. Control crawling and indexing. Sitemap extensions. Meta tags. Crawler management. Google crawlers. Site moves and changes.

Site moves. International and multilingual sites. JavaScript content. Change your Search appearance. Using structured data. Feature guides. Debug with search operators. Web Stories. Early Adopters Program. Optimize your page experience. Choose a configuration. Search APIs. If we redirect a website that is about watches let's say - awesome-watches.

You want a new top level domain for your website without damaging your link value and rankings. To serve either of the version of www vs non-www. This is done with a combination of redirect and mod-rewrite. Content duplication.

For example you may redirect www. If you have many topically relevant but outdated websites which your are not willing to maintain anymore, you may slowly redirecting the outdated websites to the most current website. But beware, if there are many websites, redirect them one by one slowly as otherwise you might end up getting flagged for being a spammer. Please take a note that At SMX, all the engineers from all the search engines made a statement that redirect will not carry the full effect if the content of the redirecting website is topically not the same.

We should avoid redirecting our website to a site which is topically irrelevant to our website. For e. An inappropriate redirect will not lead to any benefit to your website.

Content developers should not use this technique to simulate "push" technology. Developers cannot predict how much time a user will require to read a page; premature refresh can disorient users. Content developers should avoid periodic refresh and allow users to choose when they want the latest information. I would think with all the information that has been published on this element, that folks would not be using it in this day and age.

Yes, I understand it is a simple mechanism to redirect users. But, it is deprecated and the authoritative resources for its use say not to use it. Google recommends a If that is the case, there is a strong chance that is how they treat the element. Its an older method that has become antiquated.

It would be in all of the SEs interest to treat it like a Junior Member joined:May 16, posts votes: 0. I've seen first hand that meta refreshes can cause direct indexing issues with Google.