Apart from refreshing the page the refresh metatag can also be used to to redirect a visitor to another page:
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.hardcode.nl">
You can use number following the content=" in the tag to specify an optional wait time.
content="0; will just send them on their way immedeatly. The following will wait six second for the refresh tag to activate
<META http-equiv="refresh" content="6;URL=http://www.hardcode.nl">