Will meta refresh work if you can't do a 301 redirect?

[seopeople]

One of the sites I do SEO for has no way to do a 301 redirect since it uses a really old server technology that doesn't support this. My question is - is there any other way to let Google understand the page has been permenantly moved?

How about a meta refresh of 0 seconds? would that do the trick? Any other ideas?

Thanks

[pbradish]

I would rather put up links with anchor text to the new website and hope visitors click thru than use the dreaded meta refresh. That tag is search-suicide.

[wheel]

I'm talking over my head technically, but if your webserver program won't handle a 301, would it be possible to do it via a program? i.e. set up a php or perl program that issues the 301?

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I have a site on a shared IIs server and the reseller can't do a redirect. I recon that the rank/traffic is worth enough to consider moving it to an Apache server first and then doing a 301 on it.

It wouldn't have to be worth much at all to make the double move well worthwhile.

Cheers

Sid

[tedster]

Google sometimes will handle a meta-refresh as if it were a 301. But there's no guarantee for this, and in some cases the meta-refresh gets flagged as what Google calls a "sneaky redirect." It's a lot better all around to actually use a proper 301.

Seopeople is talking about a 301 for a page within a website, and the target is still on the same domain, correct? Scripted possibilities do exist - for instance, on Windows you can use vbscript in the source code for the url.

I'd suggest discussing any technical points on the applicable forum: we've got dedicated forums for Apache, Windows, Perl. PHP and "Website Technology Issues".