[paul]

A zero meta refresh could be one of the alternative of 301 redirect in certain situation which works like a 301 redirect, I think this paragraph would help you in your case; sebastians-pamphlets.com/google-and-yahoo-treat-undelayed-meta-refresh-as-301-redirect/

Matt also refer 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes in a interview last year;

"So, something like that could certainly be promising, because it lets you keep the direct nature of a link while still sending a signal to someone. In general, Google does a relatively good job of following the 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes and JavaScript. Typically what we don't do would be to follow a chain of redirects that goes through a robots.txt that is itself forbidden". Ref; stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml