Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Best practice to redirects based on visitors' detected language

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Best practice to redirects based on visitors' detected language

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    9
    26383
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Damiano
      Damiano last edited by

      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/page2

      The Italian pages are available under the /it/ level:
      www.site.com/it   Italian homepage www.site.com/it/pagina1
      www.site.com/it/pagina2

      When 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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Damiano
        Damiano @CoolSEOnStuff last edited by

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CoolSEOnStuff
          CoolSEOnStuff last edited by

          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.

          Damiano 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Damiano
            Damiano @vheilman last edited by

            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

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • vheilman
              vheilman last edited by

              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

              Damiano 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • vheilman
                vheilman @A_Q last edited by

                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.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • A_Q
                  A_Q last edited by

                  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.

                  vheilman 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • vheilman
                    vheilman last edited by

                    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

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • wissamdandan
                      wissamdandan last edited by

                      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

                      watch?v=7paVYBgH0Hw

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • Caffeine_Marketing

                        We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version?

                        We are redirecting http and non www versions of our website. Should all versions http (non www version and www version) and https (non www version) should just have 1 redirect to the https www version? Thant way all forms of the website are pointing to one version?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing
                        0
                      • teddef

                        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 | | teddef
                        0
                      • VeteransFirstMarketing

                        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 | | VeteransFirstMarketing
                        0
                      • McTaggart

                        Image URLs - best practice

                        Hi - I'm assuming image URL best practice follows same principles as non image URLs (not too many files and so on) - I notice alot of web devs putting photos in subdomains, so wonder if I'm missing something (I usually avoid subdomains like the plague)!

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                        1
                      • kevinliao

                        What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?

                        We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao
                        0
                      • CommT

                        Should I redirect my xml sitemap?

                        Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT
                        0
                      • Alexogilvie

                        Best practice for expandable content

                        We are in the middle of having new pages added to our website. On our website we will have a information section containing various details about a product, this information will be several paragraphs long. we were wanting to show the first paragraph and have a read more button to show the rest of the content that is hidden. Whats googles view on this, is this bad for seo?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexogilvie
                        0
                      • Dillman

                        How do I get rel='canonical' to eliminate the trailing slash on my home page??

                        I have been searching high and low. Please help if you can, and thank you if you spend the time reading this. I think this issue may be affecting most pages. SUMMARY: I want to eliminate the trailing slash that is appended to my website. SPECIFIC ISSUE: I want www.threewaystoharems.com to showing up to users and search engines without the trailing slash but try as I might it shows up like www.threewaystoharems.com/ which is the canonical link. WHY?  and I'm concerned my back-links to the link without the trailing slash will not be recognized but most people are going to backlink me without a trailing slash. I don't want to loose linkjuice from the people and the search engines not being in consensus about what my page address is. THINGS I"VE TRIED: (1) I've gone in my wordpress settings under permalinks and tried to specify no trailing slash. I can do this here but not for the home page. (2) I've tried using the SEO by yoast to set the canonical page. This would work if I had a static front page, but my front page is of blog posts and so there is no advanced page settings to set the canonical tag. (3) I'd like to just find the source code of the home page, but because it is CSS, I don't know where to find the reference.  I have gone into the css files of my wordpress theme looking in header and index and everywhere else looking for a specification of what the canonical page is. I am not able to find it. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file. (4) Went into cpanel file manager looking for files that contain Canonical. I only found a file called canonical.php . the only thing that seemed like it was worth changing was changing line 139 from $redirect_url = home_url('/');  to $redirect_url = home_url('');       nothing happened. I'm thinking it is actually specified in the .htaccess file. (5) I have gone through the .htaccess file and put thes 4 lines at the top (didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) and then at the bottom of the file  (also didn't redirect or create the proper canonical link) :   RewriteEngine on
                        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z.]+)?threewaystoharems.com$ [NC]
                        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
                        RewriteRule .? http://www.%1threewaystoharems.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] Please help friends.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dillman
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.