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Can this meta refresh affect Search engines?

kapow

8:52 am on Aug 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Can this meta refresh affect Search engines?

I am managing a new site for a client.
The ISP for my client manages the client's domain name and email.
The ISP has set www.my_domain.co.uk to the new IP for the site.
They say they can't do this for [my_domain.co.uk...] (without www.) because that is used for mail.
I asked them to make a .htaccess (redirect 301 / [my_domain.co.uk...] - they can't.
So they have setup an instant meta refresh (shown below).
Can this affect Search engines?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<TITLE>ISP Company Name</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.my_domain.co.uk">
<meta name="copyright" content="2002 ISP Company Name">
<meta name="creator" content="ISP Company Name">
<meta name="publisher" content="www.ISP_Name.com">
<meta name="identifier" content="www.ISP_Name.com">
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
</HEAD>
<BODY>
</BODY>
</HTML>

DaveAtIFG

2:20 pm on Aug 1, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

It certainly did at one time!

It was a technique that helped a webmaster to get a high ranking page indexed while sending users to a more presentable page. Your question is, "Can this meta refresh affect Search engines?" Bear in mind that each SE has different preferences...

With all of that said, I'm not certain how any SEs presently react, it's simply become habit for me to use a minimum of 5 seconds for meta redirects for the past several years to avoid SE problems.

Does anyone have more recent experience?

kapow

5:32 pm on Aug 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

If I had a choice I would never use an instant refresh on a SE marketed website. The problem is I don't have much choice - the ISP is not being very helpful.

Any direct knowledge / experience would help my argument.

JayC

6:12 pm on Aug 2, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member

10+ Year Member

Am I missing something? The host says they can't set example.com to the same IP as www.example.com because "that is used for mail." But they have set it up to point to a different IP from which you have a meta refresh going to the real site? Do I have that right? So why isn't the "it's uused for mail" excuse preventing even that approach? And, if they can put an index.html there in which to include the refresh, why can't they put .htaccess with a 301 redirect?

Clearly either they don't know what they're doing (because there's no reason why example.com shouldn't be able to be used both for email and for web traffic) or they aren't telling you their real reasons for not doing it.

I realize it's a client's site and not yours, but moving it might be the best choice! :)

Any direct knowledge / experience would help my argument.

There certainly are many hearsay examples of that refresh technique causing search engine problems. I say it that way because there isn't much "direct knowledge" of any such things; only guesses and observations. Personally I haven't heard many examples of it causing problems recently, but that could just as well be because people do tend to avoid even trying it because it's become "conventional wisdom" that it has adversely affected sites and rankings in the past.