Some Page Redirects Are Considered Search Engine Spamming

The META refresh is an easy way to make sure that visitors see the correct page. There are legitimate reasons for using the tag, but search engine spiders usually don't spend a lot of time evaluating them. Often, they'll leave as soon as they encounter a refresh attribute because it's a spammer favorite.

Many "search engine spammers" would use this technique to create keyword rich content for the search engines to see, then quickly redirect the user to a different page. While there are some legitimate reasons to use redirects for search engine placement, the search engines have to protect themselves against this spamming technique.

The method of protection is to penalize pages that use this technique. Any page that requires a redirect is not one that you would probably want an honest top listing for. For this reason if you are using tons of meta refresh tags ,you may want to use a robots exclusion tag. Another way of minimizing the potential for any "spam" penalty is to set the meta refresh time delay to at least 3 - 5 seconds.

Here are the most common uses for Page Redirects or "META Refresh":