Redirect question

[Mike]

Given the variety of ways one could redirect a link, what are the pros / cons of the various methods?

301 using .htaccess
Meta refresh
PHP header
Javascript
URL forwarding via your webhost

I guess what I'm looking for is: 1) do they all pass the same header information showing that the visitor came from your site? 2) why would you use one type over another?

 

[smaxor]

The question you asked can break into a couple pieces:

server response codes and and languages.

Really languages is about what you have available to you. header() in PHP or a js location.replace() don't really make much difference. It's just a lot of places you can not use PHP but you can use JS. Other times people have JS disabled then you defer to a meta refresh.

Do your research on 301 and 302 redirects for SEO purposes. They're temporary and perm return codes. Perm is going to transfer all the link weight/ranking weight to the new location. Where temp is just that and not going to transfer that power over.

As far as stripping referer info Meta refresh is the best but not 100%. I hear if you pause 2 secs it's 100% but haven't ever tested.

 

[megrisoft]

301 is the most famous redirection which is been used these days and the search engines are also accepting the same.So this one is been used by many these days.

 

[wsmith810]

Good question mike, and nice answer smax...

As far as stripping referer info Meta refresh is the best but not 100%. I hear if you pause 2 secs it's 100% but haven't ever tested.

You know I heard the same somewhere... when I originally started using Meta Refreshes I did 1 sec... Now all my redirects are either 0 (with no load) or 1 with a load splash.

 

[Mike]

Thanks Smaxor! That's what I was looking for