Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How safe is it to use a meta-refresh to hide the referrer?
-
Hi guys,
So I have a review site and I'm affiliated with several partnership programs whose products I advertise on my site. I don't want these affiliate programs to see the source of my traffic (my site), so I'm looking for a safe solution to hide the referrer URL.
I have recently added a rel="noreferrer" tag to all my affiliate links, but this method isn't perfect as not all browsers respect that rule. After doing some research and checking my competitors I noticed that some of them use meta-refresh, which seems more reliable in this regard.
So, how safe is it to use meta-refresh as means of hiding referrer URL? I'm worrying that implementing a meta-refresh redirect might negatively affect my SEO. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to hide the referrer URL without damaging SEO?
Thank you.
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
-
How do Yelp and Justia get all the extra Meta Description Real estate?
I was doing some KW research for a client and noticed something interesting with regard to Yelp and Justia. For a search on DWI Attorneys, they each had over 300 character meta descriptions showing on the SERP without truncating. Everyone else was either truncated or within limit of roughly 160 characters. Obviously if there is a way to get something other than a list to show that way you can own some real estate. Would love to hear from some of you Mozzers on this. Here are two images that should assist. Best Edit: I found one that was not a directory site and it appears it is Google doing it. The site has no meta description for the home page and this is what is being pulled by Google. There are 327 characters here! The truncation marks are showing it being pulled from different parts of the page. Image is Killeen DWI Attorney. NOTE None of these are clients, etc. I also changed the cities so this is a general search. zAQpA qZ9KI 06p7U
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher1 -
What referrer is shown in http request when google crawler visit a page?
Is it legit to show different content to http request having different referrer? case a: user view one page of the site with plenty of information about one brand, and click on a link on that page to see a product detail page of that brand, here I don't want to repeat information about the brand itself case b: a user view directly the product detail page clicking on a SERP result, in this case I would like to show him few paragraph about the brand Is it bad? Anyone have experience in doing it? My main concern is google crawler. Should not be considered cloaking because I am not differentiating on user-agent bot-no-bot. But when google is crawling the site which referrer will use? I have no idea, does anyone know? When going from one link to another on the website, is google crawler leaving the referrer empty?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | max.favilli0 -
Is it okay to copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag?
I have heard conflicting answers to this. I always figured that it was okay to selectively copy and paste on page content into the meta description tag.....especially if the onpage content is well written. How can it be duplicate content if it's pulling from the exact same page? Does anybody have any feedback from a credible source about this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications1 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
Is using dots in URL path really a problem?
we have a couple of pages displaying a dot in the URL path like domain.com/mr.smith/widget-mr.smith It displays fine in chrome, firefox and IE and for the user it may actually look better than replacing it by _ or -. Did this ever cause problems to anybody?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Any statement from google about it?
Should I change existing URLs? If so, which other characters can I use in the URL instead of underscore and dash, since in our system dash and underscore are already used for rewriting other characters. Thanks0 -
Noindex a meta refresh site
I have a client's site that is a vanity URL, i.e. www.example.com, that is setup as a meta refresh to the client's flagship site: www22.example.com, however we have been seeing Google include the Vanity URL in the index, in some cases ahead of the flagship site. What we'd like to do is to de-index that vanity URL. We have included a no-index meta tag to the vanity URL, however we noticed within 24 hours, actually less, the flagship site also went away as well. When we removed the noindex, both vanity and flagship sites came back. We noticed in Google Webmaster that the flagship site's robots.txt file was corrupt and was also in need of fixing, and we are in process of fixing that - Question: Is there a way to noindex vanity URL and NOT flagship site? Was it due to meta refresh redirect that the noindex moved out the flagship as well? Was it maybe due to my conducting a google fetch and then submitting the flagship home page that the site reappeared? The robots.txt is still not corrected, so we don't believe that's tied in here. To add to the additional complexity, the client is UNABLE to employ a 301 redirect, which was what I recommended initially. Anyone have any thoughts at all, MUCH appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ACNINTERACTIVE0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?
Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐1
