Meta Refresh

please, what is the latest re spiders

[chewy]

I'm working on a new site where there is a meta refresh statement in the index.htm page redirecting to index.php.

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.example.com/index.php">

Normally, I would think this was SEO poision - but I noticed that some of the (new) php pages are all in Google's index and cache.

Is Google regarding html refreshes differently?

[edited by: BlobFisk at 3:09 pm (utc) on Nov. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified URL [/edit]

[encyclo]

The situation hasn't changed, but I'm struggling to find a good reason why you should be using a meta refresh in this situation at all. If you go to example.com/ do you get served index.php or index.htm?

If the former, then your index.php page would be indexed as there would be backlinks to the root URL without the specified page name. If the latter, then you really need to fix the DirectoryIndex to serve index.php first, then use a 301 permanent redirect from index.htm to the root URL.

[chewy]

I'm going to advise the server guy set up the 301.

He's the one who set up the redirect. I'm just doing the SEM.

Going to the root with a browser loads the html page which redirects to the php page.

http checking returns a 200 and then shows the actual redirect meta tag pointing to the php index page.

I'm curious as to why the new php inner pages are showing up in the index at all.

[webboy1]

I recently needed a redirect through some ASP pages. From what i read, the 301 was the way to go. There are a few ways to do it. I choose to do it straight through IIS.

I was given a URL to a page all about the different ways of doing it:

[webconfs.com...]

[encyclo]

As I mentioned, the biggest problem then is that the index.htm page is still being served as the default file - it is the index.php file which should be the default, reverting to index.htm or index.html if an index.php file is absent. The way to change this depends on which web server software you are using. In Apache, you can simply use the

DirectoryIndex

directive in httpd.conf or .htaccess:

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

Then the 301 redirect will only be inplemented for bookmarks and direct links to the index.htm file, not to all requests for the root URL.