Redirect Best Practices

301 + Meta Refresh?

[petra]

Hello,

A site has purchased another and we're working on redirects and wanted your views on this

A (301) combined with a meta refresh to achieve the goal of letting the search engines know that the old site has been permanently redirected to the new one while simultaneously giving users a message of this changes.

So basically 301 homepage of old site to a dedicated page on the new site and then meta refresh it to the homepage of the new site after a message (shown for 15 secs) is displayed?

Given search engine's caution of meta refreshes, would the above be risky? If it is what do you suggest as best practice?

[petra]

on further research, it seems that google treats a meta refresh longer than 2 to 3 secs as 302 while anything shorter as 301, do any members here have any experience with this?

[Receptional Andy]

Personally, I think the approach you're considering is flawed.

A permanent redirect means just that - the page has been assigned a new, permanent URL. If you then have another redirect, by definition, your redirect is not permanent.

[petra]

I agree but how would you deal with the challenge of letting people know that the old site has been purchased by the new? A simple 301 redirect would not allow you to do that.

[Receptional Andy]

I would announce it - on the acquired site, on the acquiring site, and perhaps through other promotional channels.

But unless you're redirecting content that now has a new location, a redirect may not even be appropriate. Is it very similar content you're redirecting to? Or, put another way, would a user requesting an old URL find what they wanted at the new URL?

[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 12:07 am (utc) on Oct. 29, 2008]

[petra]

Thanks Andy, given what you said and my initial hunch, I've asked them to conduct a straight 301 and have a link to a new page from homepage (nofollowed) explaining the changes.
cheers!
P