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Google has been visiting a site file, 'test3.php', many, many times. I'm wondering if this could have any effect on our SEO, if it shows a fault in the coding, or if it part of the design for this site -- simply a way to refresh pages using a separate file. And if so, is this a good practice?

This is the content of the file:

    <?phpsession_start();?><html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="60;url=test3.php" /></head><body bgcolor="#ffffff"></body></html>

Most of the pages on the site refer to this file, and a sitemap shows it's there, although there is no 'test3.php' visible in the code of any of those pages.

Is this code necessary? Advisable?

And every 60 seconds, as you might expect, livehttpheaders Generator tab shows this activity: 

    GET /test3.php   #request# GET http://www.mysite.net/test3.php   GET /test3.php

etc.

Avigail
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    all of your site's pages have this meta tag? How does your site work, if everyone gets kicked to this test3.php after 60 seconds? – Marc B Nov 27 '13 at 16:05
  • I just found it in the footer file: – Avigail Nov 27 '13 at 16:42
  • Visitors don't appear to go to that page, which anyway is a blank white screen, if you visit it specifically, but something on each page apparently refreshes every 60 seconds. Looks like it's the i-frame in the footer refreshing. – Avigail Nov 27 '13 at 16:50

1 Answers1

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As you know, http-equiv="refresh" is for refreshing a page for x seconds.

<head>
   <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30">
</head>

The above code will refresh the document every 30 seconds.

Search engines usually don't like it. So my suggestion is not to use it.

some Info on recommendation on usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_refresh

Purus
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  • Thanks for the advice. Removing this code does not seem to cause any problems, and hopefully will be beneficial. – Avigail Nov 27 '13 at 18:15
  • Yeah. You should use it only when its actually required to redirect a user. – Purus Nov 27 '13 at 18:17