Every few years, it is important to cover some basic topics and we’ve covered it in 2008 and 2011, so now in 2015, it still applies.

Do not use meta-refresh-type redirects for communicating to Google that a site or page has moved.

Google’s John Mueller said this once again after people have quoted him from years ago. John wrote in a Google Webmaster Help thread:

The interesting part is that he latter added that if you have no choice, it is better than not doing any type of redirect. He wrote:

Of course, also follow Googles site move documentation and he specifically called out “don’t block the old URLs via robots.txt and make sure the “redirects” are on a per-URL basis.”

So if you are going to use a meta-refresh-type redirect, make sure to listen to those last two points very carefully.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.