Rankelle

Page redirects with a meta refresh

The page uses a meta refresh tag to send visitors elsewhere. It is slower than a server redirect, passes ranking signals less reliably, and some browsers let users disable it.

How to fix it

Replace it with a server-side 301 redirect to the same destination.

When it is not a problem

A refresh with a delay that shows a message first (you are being redirected) is a design choice rather than a mistake, though a server redirect still serves the visitor better.

How Rankelle handles it

  • SeverityWarning. It costs traffic or clarity without stopping anything, which is where most real work lives.
  • DetectionDetected on a single page while crawling it, then grouped with the other pages under the same URL pattern.
  • GroupingEvery page with this finding under the same URL pattern becomes one cause, with a confidence taken from how much of the pattern is affected. 400 of 400 is a template; 6 of 14 is phrased as a question. Causes are ranked by the impressions behind their pages.
  • LandingThe affected URLs stay under cheap watch. When this finding is gone from all of them, the fix is marked landed without anyone reporting the deploy.
  • VerdictAt landing, comparable untouched URLs are frozen as a control set. Twenty-eight days later the two are compared, and the fix can come back as having done nothing — all four verdicts reach the report.

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