Meta Refresh

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What Does Meta Refresh Mean?

A meta refresh is a method used in HTML to redirect Web users to a new page from an old address. Using the HTML meta-element with the refresh command can accommodate this type of change, which can be extremely important for maintaining Web traffic for a given domain or project.

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Techopedia Explains Meta Refresh

One type of control that HTML provides for a meta refresh is a time indicator, which determines how quickly a Web user is redirected. By entering a value into this time indicator, programmers can change how redirection occurs.

In general, a meta refresh is only one of many meta-commands that provide top-level identification for an HTML page. These include meta-description and meta-name structures that help to show authorship of a page and identify it with descriptive information that will aid in search engine optimization and other situations.

The World Wide Web Consortium has released certain conventions related to the meta-element. For example, there is the consistent standard that a meta-tag goes inside of a head element and that metadata is always passed using the name/value pairings.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.