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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      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. International SEO
    4. Multilang site: Auto redirect 301 or 302?

    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.

    Multilang site: Auto redirect 301 or 302?

    International SEO
    redirect 301 redirect 302 international seo
    3
    5
    4919
    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.
    • fJ66doneOIdDpj
      fJ66doneOIdDpj Subscriber last edited by

      We need to establish if 301 or 302 response code is to be used for our auto redirects based on Accept-Language header.

      https://domain.com
      30x > https://domain.com/en
      30x > https://domain.com/ru
      30x > https://domain.com/de

      The site architecture is set up with proper inline HREFLANG.
      We have read different opinions about this, Ahrefs says 302 is the correct one:
      https://ahrefs.com/blog/301-vs-302-redirects/
      302 redirect:
      "You want to redirect users to the right version of the site for them (based on location/language)."

      You could argue that the root redirect is never permanent as it varies based on user language settings (302)
      On the other hand, the lang specific redirects are permanent per language:

      IF Accept-Language header = en
      https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/en
      IF Accept-Language header = ru
      https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/ru

      So each of these is 'permanent'.

      So which is the correct?

      Tom.Capper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Scottoffroad
        Scottoffroad last edited by

        Hi Guys i am newer to SEO. my web with the 301 302 issue. anyone able help to fix it? will be high appreciated.

        Internal URL
        Yes
        Full URL
        https://myoffroadled.com/led-rocker-switch
        HTTP status code
        301 Moved permanently
        First found at
        Seed URL
        Content type
        text/html; charset=utf-8
        Depth
        0
        Redirect URL
        https://www.myoffroadled.com/led-rocker-switch/
        Not crawled
        Is redirect loop
        No
        Page rating
        100

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Tom.Capper
          Tom.Capper Subject Expert @fJ66doneOIdDpj last edited by

          @fj66doneoiddpj In some cases users may have a reason for using the site in something other than their browser language.

          For example, perhaps a shared device, or simply wishing to check a different localisation.

          If your hreflang is working correctly, they should never see the "wrong" version anyhow.

          But, there are pros and cons of course.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • fJ66doneOIdDpj
            fJ66doneOIdDpj Subscriber last edited by

            Thank you for the reply, 302 is also what we decided after many hours of reading.
            The main reason for auto redirect is that we feel it's a better user experience as user will arrive the content target to his/her browser language.

            Tom.Capper 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Tom.Capper
              Tom.Capper Subject Expert @fJ66doneOIdDpj last edited by

              @fj66doneoiddpj

              I would use a 302 here, just as an added insurance in case you ever accidentally serve Google the redirect.

              However, I'm not a huge fan of auto redirects in general - they tend to cause issues for crawlers and users alike. Can you explain a bit more when/why the user gets redirected? Perhaps instead you could serve a country selection insterstitial if a user seems to be on the "wrong" variant?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 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

              • davidvogel

                Best redirect destination for 18k highly-linked pages

                redirect redirect chain technical seo 301 redirects

                Technical SEO question regarding redirects; I appreciate any insights on best way to handle. Situation: We're decommissioning several major content sections on a website, comprising ~18k webpages. This is a well established site (10+ years) and many of the pages within these sections have high-quality inbound links from .orgs and .edus. Challenge: We're trying to determine the best place to redirect these 18k pages. For user experience, we believe best option is the homepage, which has a statement about the changes to the site and links to the most important remaining sections of the site. It's also the most important page on site, so the bolster of 301 redirected links doesn't seem bad. However, someone on our team is concerned that that many new redirected pages and links going to our homepage will trigger a negative SEO flag for the homepage, and recommends instead that they all go to our custom 404 page (which also includes links to important remaining sections). What's the right approach here to preserve remaining SEO value of these soon-to-be-redirected pages without triggering Google penalties?

                Technical SEO | | davidvogel
                0
              • CitimarineMoz

                How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?

                301 redirect page rank

                I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks

                Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz
                0
              • aplusnetsolutions

                How can I make a list of all URLs indexed by Google?

                redirect indexed urls google url index google broken links

                I have a large site with over 6000 pages indexed but only 600 actual pages and need to clean up with 301 redirects. Haven't had this need since Google stopped displaying the url's in the results.

                SEO Tactics | | aplusnetsolutions
                0
              • LASClients

                302 redirects in Magento, trying to fix

                magento 302

                Hi all, I'm assigned a site in Magento. After the first craw, we found almost 15k 302 redirects. A sample URL ends with this /stores/store/switch/?SID=qdq9mf1u6afgodo1vtvk0ucdpb&___from_store=default&___store=german&uenc=aHR0cHM6Ly9qdWljeWZsdXRlcy5jb20vP19fX3N0b3JlPWdlcm1hbg%2C%2C And they are currently 302 redirecting to the homepage as well as other main pages and also product pages it seems. Some of these point to account pages where customers log in. Probably best for me to de-index those so no issues there. But I'm worried about the 302 redirects to public pages. The extension we have installed is SEO Suite Ultimate by MageWorx. Does anyone here have experience here specifically and how did you fix it? Thanks, JC

                Technical SEO | | LASClients
                0
              • lcourse

                How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?

                I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
                Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking? I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain). Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned? What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?

                International SEO | | lcourse
                0
              • KevinDunne

                Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?

                hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!

                International SEO | | KevinDunne
                0
              • H-FARM

                IP Redirection vs. cloaking: no clear directives from Google

                Hi there, Here is our situation:we need to force an IP Redirection for our US users to www.domain.com and at the same time we have different country-specific subfolders with thei own language such as www.domain.com/fr. Our fear is that by forcing an IP redirection for US IP, we will prevent googlebot (which has an US IP) from crawling our country-specific subfolders. I didn't find any clear directives from Google representatives on that matter. In this video  Matt Cutts says it's always better to show Googlebot the same content as your users http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFf1gwr6HJw&noredirect=1, but on the other hand in that other video he says "Google basically crawls from one IP address range worldwide because (they) have one index worldwide. (They) don't build different indices, one for each country". This seems a contradiction to me... Thank you for your help !! Matteo

                International SEO | | H-FARM
                0
              • Dennis-52961

                How can I see what my web site looks like from a different country?

                I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!

                International SEO | | Dennis-52961
                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
              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.