Delayed meta refresh
Silktide checks your pages for code that automatically reloads the page or redirects visitors to another page after a countdown. Visitors have no way to pause or extend this countdown, so pages should not use it.
The code responsible is a meta refresh tag with a delay:
<!-- Problem: redirects after 5 seconds, which visitors cannot control -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=https:\/\/example.com\/new-page">
<!-- Problem: reloads the page every 30 seconds -->
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="30">
Why this matters
A page that changes on its own timer pulls the rug out from under people who read slowly, use a , or magnify their screen. A redirect can fire before they finish reading; a reload can throw away a half-completed form and send a screen reader back to the top of the page. Because the delay is fixed in the page's , no visitor can extend it to suit their pace.
Delayed redirects also confuse search engines, which handle them inconsistently compared to proper server-side redirects.
How to fix it
- For redirects, replace the meta refresh with a server-side redirect (an HTTP 301 or 302 response), which happens instantly and needs no countdown. Most hosting platforms and CMSs offer redirect settings.
- If a server redirect is impossible, set the delay to
0so the redirect is immediate - an instant redirect passes this check. - For auto-reloading content, remove the refresh and update the content in place with instead, ideally with a control that lets visitors pause the updates.
How Silktide tests this
- Find every
<meta http-equiv="refresh">tag on each page. - Read the number of seconds from its
contentattribute. - Report the tag if the delay is greater than zero, whether it reloads the same page or redirects to another.
- Tags with a zero-second delay (an instant redirect) are not reported.