I found this on another forum. "If you are on a free host and if you don't care whether your stuff gets banned by search engines or not, you can use META refreshs: <META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="0; URL=http://www.example.com/other-directory/other-page.htm">" I had a couple of them, which I deleted, but I was wondering how much the SE's frown on Meta Refresh. Any ideas? FB
I don't think this would be an issue with SE unless your site gives the same content at every refresh instead of some new content. If it gives same content, SE will just ignore your meta tag refresh. And usually, meta refresh is used for the sites where the content is continuously updated like stock prices, news and such. Alternatively, it is extensively used for redirecting the pages to new location. So depending on your site, it may be preferable to use, but for SE, as per my opinion, i don't think it would hurt your site!
Yes, SE will ban you if you are redirecting your page to another site as it can recognize change in ip address. but you can disable the page from indexing in robots.txt
Sometimes you have no choice but to use meta refresh to redirect a user from an old page or site to a new one. Many free hosting arrangements do not allow you to use other methods, such as the .htaccess file. It's generally accepted that it okay to use meta refresh for a redirection as long as you set a 10 second delay. Immediate redirections can look like cloaking.