Meta refresh for news site?

[KristieWahlquist]

We have a news site that uses a meta refresh (<meta < span="">http-equiv="refresh" content="600" /> across all content. I understand the reasoning on the homepage and am trying to decide of the cons of using this (slows page, is it treated differently and loses pagerank/link ..) Does anyone have experience with meta refresh being a negative thing or does it no longer matter?</meta <>

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Is there a particular reason you are using a meta refresh? The W3C recommends they not be used, and according to this Google resource, Google recommends using 301s.

Is this for non www to www or http to https purposes? I don't understand the context that's why I am asking.

Let me know - thanks so much!

[SWN]

It's a news site that updates the content on the site by the minute so they staff figured a meta refresh would give the user new content to see. Across the site it would be for the breaking news headlines.

[Dr-Pete]

So, it's just refreshing itself, right? It should be ok - Google can view meta-refresh as 301-like if it's going to a new/different URL, but a refresh will probably be ignored. If the pages are the same content but different URLs, be careful - I'd at least make sure I had rel=canonical in place.