Meta Refresh and google listings

[THT]

If I had a page with meta refresh in it, or some kind of method to redirect to a different page after a certain amount of time, then google would still index the page itself rather than the page i redirected to - right?


or wrong?

i bet this would get me penalised though....

[disgust]

yes, that's right. and yes, it would most likely be penalised unless the refresh rate is quite high.

[digitalpoint]

You would be better off doing a 301 HTTP redirect. It's arguable wether Google will even follow a meta refresh.

[THT]

hmmm what about if i detected google as the user agent, then i could show a certain page if it was the googlebot and another page when the user actually visited....

What about that?

[digitalpoint]

That's called cloaking and an easy way to get yourself banner from the Google index altogether.

[THT]

and i guess banned as well ;)

[digitalpoint]

Opps... would edit it, but then your post would make no sense. ;)

[Owlcroft]

Meta-refresh is a rubber crutch. As others have noted, a 301 Permanent Redirect is the ticket you want.

That is easily enough achieved in an .htaccess file if your host server is running Apache. There have been threads here explaining the mechanics: Google for them.

If your host is not running Apache, perhaps it's time to consider changing hosts.

(An unsolicited, uncompensated endorsement: Pair Networks--http://www.pair.com--is a great host at a very fair price.)