Question: What are the SEO consequences of redirecting web traffic with a META REFRESH?
Details: I'm working with an old static site that's migrating to a new address. I'm redirecting traffic to the new site using meta refreshes on all static pages, like this:
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://www.newsite.com/">
Of course, I'd rather write the redirects directly into an Apache file (or an .htaccess file), but due to some server weirdness that's beyond my control, I'm stuck with the meta refreshes.
So I'm wondering what the consequences are here? Will the site's search ranking be affected? Will the new site be indexed? I've read that Google (et al.) will treat the refresh as a proper 301 redirect as long as it's set to 0 seconds (anything longer will be deemed spam). How will analytics be affected?
What's the true behavior here? Any thoughts?
It's not ideal, but apparently it's ok:
http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/google-and-yahoo-treat-undelayed-meta-refresh-as-301-redirect/
Also read number 2 on this page:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/answers-to-the-seo-professionals-litmus-test
as i can not comment on the fact, if a 0sec meta refresh is treated as a 301 redirect, i would just go with the way google recommends. see http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
<head>
...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.newsite.com/" />
...
</head>
from http://www.newsite.com/awesomepage.html
<head>
...
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.newsite.com/awesomepage" />
...
</head>
and so on.
cross domain canonicals are basically treated like HTTP 301 for googlebot. whatever you do with the user (i.e.: meta refresh, or just leave him/her on the old page) is optional (as long as it is not missleading).
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5392001/seo-consequences-of-redirecting-with-meta-refresh