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
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
-
Breaks in meta |
Hi Does anyone have an opinion on breaks in meta & whether Google reads what is after the break? For example Tubular Shelves | Easy Store Plus | Heavy Duty Shelving Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Replicating keywords in the URL - bad?
Our site URL structure used to be (example site) frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/blue-frogs wherefrogsforsale.com/cute-frogs-for-sale/ was in front of every URL on the site. We changed it by removing the for-sale part of the URL to be frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs. Would that have hurt our rankings and traffic by removing the for-sale? Or was having for-sale in the URL twice (once in domain, again in URL) hurting our site? The business wants to change the URLs again to put for-sale back in, but in a new spot such as frogsforsale.com/cute-frogs/blue-frogs-for-sale as they are convinced that is the cause of the rankings and traffic drop. However the entire site was redesigned at the same time, the site architecture is very different, so it is very hard to say whether the traffic drop is due to this or not.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
How to find a good seo company?
Hello there, Can anyone recommend how to go about finding a good seo company?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Social Impacts on SEO? How to Do this?
I'm new in SEO and heard by one of my friend that social signals are important for SEO of a website. If people have shared a website's url on their twitter, then it will automatically get rank in google. Is that true and how google sees this social sharing? and how can I do this for my website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hammadrafique0 -
Region specific SEO
I am doing SEO for a client in Canada. A few of his keywords are: palliative care
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__
home health care
home care
respite care
senior care He wants to attract vistors only from Calgary specifically, not Canada wide. What should I do to optimize his website only for Calgary region? Should I add the word 'Calgary' to all his keywords?0 -
Hacked - Lost Meta Data
Our website was hacked last night and all data lost. I've worked over night to replace the destroyed data which was essentially things like all of our prices, testimonials, etc, etc. Got that sorted but now notice that all our page meta data has disappeared, title, description, etc. I'm worried that if I dont' enter the correct data that corresponds to Google "records" that we will lose our page one ranking. I've gone into Webmaster Tools and also I've used SEOQuake but the pages found have their meta data stripped when I go into "source". Before I start re-entering what I think would be the correct data I wondered if anyone had any advice please? Thanks, Colin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0 -
Do widgets and gadgets affect SEO?
I have added a number of widgets and gadgets to my site that I suspect act like Iframes. If true do these widgets and gadgets and the content that they are linked to help or hurt my site from an SEO perspective? Examples are facebook gadget, wordpress blidget, weather gadget, google maps widget.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340