Meta Refresh

[redbarron]

I have a client who tried to meta refresh their old pages to the new ones instead of a doing a 301 redirect. Using Google Sitemaps, I could see that Google was continuing to search the old pages, which had no pagerank to speak of. The old pages no longer exist with content, they are just there to point spiders to the new locations. Everything I have read suggestst that this is the wrong way, but will Google penalize the site if there is no content in the old pages but the meta refresh? Or should I just leave them alone?

Thanks for any help.

[Beginner]

In my experience Google's algorithm is very prone to shifting here. At times Google will completely ignore meta refreshes. If this is the case then you'll not be penalised; you'll just not successfully transfer search status from the old pages to the new.

At other times - including post Big Daddy/right now - Google will treat a 0 second meta refresh as a 301. In other words, if you meta refresh www.example.com/a.html to www.example.com/b.html then, in time, you'll just have www.example.com/b.html in the index. The 'in time' caveat is important because G seems to need to take three or four minor index updates to convince itself that the 0 second meta refresh is there to stay. Of course, G still needs to download a.html in order to reach the refresh command. Any client side command will require G to spider the URL.

Just missing www.example.com/a.html from your sitemap XML will not mean Google will ignore www.example.com/a.html if it finds links to the URL.

As to your question; I would not leave it alone. I would correct the situation. There have been occasions where the presence of a meta refresh does carry a negative wait. Not all search engines are as good as Google.

[David Wallace]

...will Google penalize the site if there is no content in the old pages but the meta refresh? Or should I just leave them alone?
They won't penalize but they won't index any content either because it doesn't exists. Set up the 301s if you want Google to find new pages in lieu of old pages.