Googlebot + Meta-Refresh

[kchandler]

Quick question, can Googlebot (or other search engines) follow meta refresh tags? Does it work anything like a 301 in terms of passing value to the new page?

[RyanPurkey]

Search engines can read meta refresh, but the the standard practice for passing value is a 301 redirect as meta refresh can have other uses while a 301 is specifically for permanent redirection.  Use the 301 if you want to pass value.

[kchandler]

I fully understand that the 301 is the best option, i was interested if it had been published anywhere that meta-refreshes could pass any value or not?

I did some searching around and couldn't find any trust worthy articles. They only thing i found was that it wasn't suggested by SEOMoz and the W3C doesn't support it...

[AdoptionHelp]

Meta Refresh can pass link juice, according to Matt Cutts:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml

But as Ryan Purkey suggests, a 301 is the accepted best-practice here. With Meta Refresh you need to be careful to avoid looking like a black-hat to a picky google algorithm. Some more discussion here.

[RyanKent]

The best information I can find on the subject is 3 years old and from Yahoo.

My understanding is do a 301 if you can, if not do a meta refresh preferably with 0.

http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/62909-Is-a-Meta-Refresh-Safe-When-You-Can-t-Do-a-301

Also in 2007, Matt Cutts said this:

Matt Cutts:  In general, Google does a relatively good job of following the 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes and JavaScript. Typically what we don't do would be to follow a chain of redirects that goes through a robots.txt that is itself forbidden.

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml

Based on that discussion it is inferred that value is passed along.

[RyanPurkey]

Right. Meta-refresh was a common black hat technique for redirecting back in the late 90s and early 2000s so it has a bit of a stigma associated with it.

[Netrepid]

Sorry to say we're digging in the crates here... but one of the companies we acquired and took over full ownership of in May of this year had a site with no htaccess in standard html. I went meta refresh for my redirects.

I'm thinking if I verify the site in WMT and then acknowledge that is has been moved to our current domain, this should probably be the most legit way to inform GOOG that we made the move.

If anyone has any feedback that is more up to date, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!