Meta refresh bad for SEO
-
Hi there,
Some external developers have created a wishlist for a website that allows visitors to add products to a wishlist and then send an enquiry. Very similar set-up to a shopping basket really (without the payment option). However, this wishlist lives in a separate iframe and refreshes every 30 seconds to reflect any items visitors add to their wishlist. This refreshing is done with a meta refresh.
I'm aware of the obvious usability issue that the visitor's product only appears after 30 seconds in their wishlist. However, are there also any SEO issues due to the refreshing of the iframe every 30 seconds?
Please let me know, whether small or large issues.
-
Live sites will get badly damaged if such this happens. Consider the cases of Sports live score sites, Online chat frames, News feeds, etc. So mostly this won't damage the SEO factors.
-
Are the wishlist pages even crawlable? Are the contents in the iFrames crawlable? If it's something that can only be accessed after a login, I wouldn't worry about it. That is, beside the fact that iFrames are gross.
But if the wishlist pages can be crawled, it's just an iFrame on the page. Though googlebot can crawl iFrames. Since the meta refresh is so long, it's not going to be treated as a 301. On the (very low) chance that someone links to the dynamic URL behind the iFrame, any link juice/power/juju/hutzpah will be lost.
I imagine that dynamic URL would be somewhere out of reach, other than from the iFrame. If the dynamic URLs are accessible to bots, and something like clientsite.com/bob-wishlist&asd09af8aws9pe8afujpeaf... that could be a problem, because it will probably generate a lot of crawl errors for the site. Though you can tell the various Webmaster Tools to avoid whatever parameter in the URLs, should such be the case.
So basically, you could run into crawling issues. All of those related to crawl budget. Andy's AJAX suggestion would be a safer bet, should you run into issues with the iFrame/meta refresh method. Just make sure to tell the various Webmaster Tools/Search Consoles/Diddle-Dad-Joes to avoid indexing URLs with whatever flavor of URL parameter used to serve the dynamic content.
-
Hi Micha,
I can't think of why Google might object to this as it isn't the page that is refreshing constantly. That said, iFrames are frowned upon from a SEO standpoint as there have been many issues with blackhat techniques in the past.
To me, I would be looking at how big the iFrame is, where it is on the page, is it every page, what content is contained in there - the usability might harm your SEO in a roundabout way though.
At best, it will do nothing to your SEO - at worst, it could cause issues.
Would you not be able to achieve what you are wanting to do by using Ajax or similar?
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Faceted Navigation & SEO
Hi Is my faceted navigation bad for SEO?! example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/metal-cabinets-cupboards Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Hypothetical SEO Question
I am running a website for a law firm. It has been running for many, many years and has plenty of backlinks and authority. I then create a standalone website for a specific type of case that the law firm is handling. On that website, I have a page that copies some of the attorney bio text from the main website. How much of a negative impact will this standalone website have on the main website as far as duplicate content issues are concerned? Please explain your answer in detail. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
Meta Abstract & Revisit
Moz Community, I have just noted a competitor using some meta information i have not seen before, Just wondering if anyone has any experience or feedback on using these tags and if they are worth implementing, Seems very similar to the meta description, i don't really see the point unless potentially this abstract could be more topic based if your meta description is designed for Click-Through optimization. Isn't this defined in the sitemap anyway? , and most of the time we will Tweet and Google Plus share any new updates to our site also Google seems to do a good job anyway of crawling anything new we publish or change, Any advice or feedback would be great please, Thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Antony_Towle0 -
SEO for interior page
Is it possible to be penalized on an interior page but not the whole website? Here's why I ask, I have a page: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com/domestic-violence.html that is not ranking well (p. 21 of Google) while the rest of the site ranks well (b/w p.1 to p.3). I checked the link profile in opensiteexplorer, ahrefs, and majesticseo but can't find any problems. I have also checked the HTML code, CSS, keyword optimization, but can't find any problems there either. Can anyone give me insight into why this might be happening? Of course, I'm working under the assumption that this page SHOULD be ranked higher for "San Diego Domestic Violence Attorney" - at least higher than page 21.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
SEO Recommendations
For about 3 years our website was number one in Google.co.uk for our trades main keyphrase which resulted in excellent sales. About 12 months ago that position started to slide downwards and for that keyphrase we are now number 10. We are still at number's 1,2 and 3 for several other keyphrases but ones that result in fewer daily Google searches and resultant sales. I have always added unique content to the site but admit that my blog posts became less than daily over the past 12 months. However I am adding posts as often as I can now, of good length and of unique content. As well as tweaking all our online seo factors I'm trying to add good backlinks as often as possible. I wonder if anyone has been in a similar position and what they did to try and regain their previous position? Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
A very basic seo question
Sorry, been a long day and wanted a second opinion on this please.... I am developing an affiliate store which will have dozens of products in each category. We will not be indexing the product pages themselves as they are all duplicate content. The plan is to have just the first page of the category results indexed as this will have unique content about the products in that section. The later pagnated pages (ie pages 2,3,4,5 etc) will have 12 products on each but no unique content. Would the best advice be to add a canonical tag to all pages in the 'chairs' category pointing to the page with the first 12 results and the descriptions? This would ensure that the visitors are able to browse many pages of product but google won't index products 13 and onwards. Am I right in my thinkings? A supplemental question. What is the best way to block google from indexing/crawling 90,000 product listings which are pulled direct from the merchant so are not unique in the least. I have previous played with banning google from the product folder but it reports health issues in webmaster tools. Would the best route be a no index tag on all the product pages and to no follow all the products in the category listings? Many thanks Carl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0