Best practice to redirects based on visitors' detected language
-
One of our websites has two languages, English and Italian.
The English pages are available at the root level:
www.site.com/ English homepage www.site.com/page1
www.site.com/page2The Italian pages are available under the /it/ level:
www.site.com/it Italian homepage www.site.com/it/pagina1
www.site.com/it/pagina2When an Italian visitor first visits www.mysit.com we'd like to redirect it to www.site.com/it but we don't know if that would impact search engine spiders (eg GoogleBot) in any way...
It would be better to do a Javascript redirect? Or an http 3xx redirect? If so, which of the 3xx redirect should we use?
Thank you
-
We've adopted the following solution:
we show the English homepage, but we determine the user's preferred language (from the Accept-Language header sent by the browser). If our site supports that language, we show a temporary balloon that highlights the related link to go to the localized homepage.
Thank you all for your hints and notes.
-
I would stay away from javascript redirects as it can be considered cloaking. Best thing to do is have a page for new visitors (those not having your cookie) and send them to a page that allows them to choose what language they want. You can then set a cookie so when they return it will automatically direct them to the right site.
By not doing any sneaky javascript redirects or IP redirects, you allow google the ability to crawl all the pages of your site and improve indexing, trust, etc etc... Also, I would go into Google webmaster tools and specify the country your /it pages are directed to. This will help in international search and trust from Google.
-
I've done a test with a simple ASP page with a Response.Redirect: <% Response.Redirect "test.htm" %>
This is what Fiddler has catched: HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.1 Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 06:44:10 GMT X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Location: test.htm Content-Length: 121 Content-Type: text/html Cache-control: private <title>Object moved</title>
Object Moved
This object may be found <a href="">here</a>.
I don't think that 302 would be the best solution. As specified in the HTTP specs ( http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html ) wouldn't we prefer a 307 Temporary Redirect?
Thank you
-
You also asked about which 30x redirect to use. I'm also looking for this answer. We currently an ASP header redirect. I don't think this is best, but I'm not sure a 301 redirect can be used. I'd like to hear from others too.
This is what we have now:
lang = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE")
real_lang = Left(lang,2)
'Response.Write real_lang
Select case real_lang
case "en"
Response.Redirect "/en"
case "fr"
Response.Redirect "/fr"
case "de"
Response.Redirect "/ge"
case else
Response.Redirect "/en"End Select
-
They automatically redirect people in the uk who type in www.google.com to www.google.co.uk
But, this is different from changing language on a visitor. I'm not sure what google would do if I was in Italy and used my american laptop to visit google.com. I don't think they'd switch me to www.google.it, but maybe someone else has this answer.
Using the browser language settings has worked well for us.
-
You might want to look into what Google do themselves.
They automatically redirect people in the uk who type in www.google.com to www.google.co.uk
If it's good enough for google it's good enough for us. Just make sure you do not look like you are cloaking.
You need to give users the ability to change language when they are on the website though. As Vince mentioned just because a user is visiting the website from Italy it does not mean that they are Italian.
-
Hi Daminao,
I do a redirect based on browser language. I'd stay away from IP/location based redirects. You can have English vistors in Italian locations that would be lost on your pages.
hth,
Vince
-
Hi Damiano,
Matt explained very good in this video and basically he answers all your question.
If you have additional Q. please let me know
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
VTEX Infinite Scroll Design: What is On-Page SEO Best Practice?
We are migrating to the VTEX E Commerce platform and it is built on javascript, so there are no <a>tags to link product pages together when there is a long list of products. According to the Google Search Console Help document, "Google can follow links only if they are an</a> <a>tag with an href attribute." - Google Search Console Help document </a>http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9112205. So, if there a 1000 products, javascript just executes to deliver more content in order to browse through the entire product list. The problem is there is no actual link for crawlers to follow. Has anyone implemented a solution to this or a similar problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggarciabisco0 -
Best practice for deindexing large quantities of pages
We are trying to deindex a large quantity of pages on our site and want to know what the best practice for doing that is. For reference, the reason we are looking for methods that could help us speed it up is we have about 500,000 URLs that we want deindexed because of mis-formatted HTML code and google indexed them much faster than it is taking to unindex them unfortunately. We don't want to risk clogging up our limited crawl log/budget by submitting a sitemap of URLs that have "noindex" on them as a hack for deindexing. Although theoretically that should work, we are looking for white hat methods that are faster than "being patient and waiting it out", since that would likely take months if not years with Google's current crawl rate of our site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teddef0 -
SEO impact of 301 redirects based on IP addresses from a specific state
Hello Moz Community! We are facing an issue that may or may not be unique, but need some advice and/or clarification on the best way to address the issue. We recently rebranded and launched a new site under a new domain and things have been progressing well. However, despite all the up front legwork on trademarks and licensing, we have recently encountered a hiccup that forces us to revert to the old URL/branding for one specific state. This may be a temporary issue that lasts a couple of months or it could potentially be in the court system for a couple of years. One potential solution we have discussed is to redirect the new site to the old site based on IP addresses for the state in question. Looking for any guidance on what type of impact this may have on SEO. Also open to any other suggestions or guidance on dealing with this situation. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VeteransFirstMarketing0 -
How can a recruitment company get 'credit' from Google when syndicating job posts?
I'm working on an SEO strategy for a recruitment agency. Like many recruitment agencies, they write tons of great unique content each month and as agencies do, they post the job descriptions to job websites as well as their own. These job websites won't generally allow any linking back to the agency website from the post. What can we do to make Google realise that the originator of the post is the recruitment agency and they deserve the 'credit' for the content? The recruitment agency has a low domain authority and so we've very much at the start of the process. It would be a damn shamn if they produced so much great unique content but couldn't get Google to recognise it. Google's advice says: "Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content." - But none of that can happen. Those big job websites just won't do it. A previous post here didn't get a sufficient answer. I'm starting to think there isn't an answer, other than having more authority than the websites we're syndicating to. Which isn't going to happen any time soon! Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Reynolds0 -
I'm a newb, built a website with Wix want to redirect it to a domain I own, but am reading that Wix is bad for this
Hi, I am building this site for my boss http://charlesfridmanpr.wix.com/real-estate and am still working on it. I'm getting close to the stage where I want to redirect it to the URL we want to use, but in reading these forums, it says that because all of subpages (?) have a # in them, they will not be read or indexed by google. I am very new to this, and while it may not look like it, the website has taken me quite a while to design. Is there a way to fix this? We want to appear high up for a non competitive keyword. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlesfridmanpr0 -
What's the best way to check Google search results for all pages NOT linking to a domain?
I need to do a bit of link reclamation for some brand terms. From the little bit of searching I've done, there appear to be several thousand pages that meet the criteria, but I can already tell it's going to be impossible or extremely inefficient to save them all manually. Ideally, I need an exported list of all the pages mentioning brand terms not linking to my domain, and then I'll import them into BuzzStream for a link campaign. Anybody have any ideas about how to do that? Thanks! Jon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonMorrow0 -
Retail Store Detail Page and Local SEO Best Practices
We are working with a large retailer that has specific pages for each store they run. We are interested in leveraging the best practices that are out their specifically for local search. Our current issue is around URL design for the stores pages themselves. Currently, we have store URL's such as: /store/12584 The number is a GUID like character that means nothing to search engines or, frankly, humans. Is there a better way we could model this URL for increased relevancy for local retail search? For example: adding store name:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mongillo
www.domain.com/store/1st-and-denny-new-york-city/23421
(example http://www.apple.com/retail/universityvillage/) fully explicit URI www.domain.com/store/us/new-york/new-york-city/10027/bronx/23421
(example http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia-san-diego-2185-san-elijo-avenue-cardiff-by-the-sea-california-92007?assetid=5172) the idea with this second version is that we'd make the URL structure more rich and detailed which might help for local search. Would there be a best practice or recommendation as to how we should model this URL? We are also working to create an on-page optimization but we're specifically interested in local seo strategy and URL design.0 -
What is the best way to incorporate region-based keywords?
Greetings Mozzers, I am wanting to get the most "bang for my buck" in regards to region based keyword pages. If I am going after the keyword "Plumber" and the region "San Antonio", would it be best to: 1- Create a San Antonio Plumber page where we can target all critical factors for the region based keyword "San Antonio Plumber"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb28
2- Link every instance of the term "San Antonio" and "San Antonio Plumber" throughout the site to the newly created "San Antonio Plumber" page. Thank you for any advice/clarification on this matter.0