How bad is for SEO to "redirect" an user depending on his browser locale ?

Question

For a personnal page I use the MultiViews options in Apache to determine which page he should see depending on his locale. Here is what I do.

Options MultiViews
AddLanguage fr .fr
AddLanguage en .en
 <IfModule mod_negotiation.c>
     LanguagePriority fr en
 </IfModule>

I am wondering if it is bad for SEO to do this since Googlebot will probably fall on 'fr' or 'en' but not both.

Would it be fixed if I add a link inside my page to the different language page.

Answer 1

The redirect isn't ‘bad’, but you'll want to make sure search engines have access to both languages' versions of a page otherwise you'll not get indexed for one of them.

Would it be fixed if I add a link inside my page to the different language page.

Yes. You should do that anyway so that users whose browser is set up with an inappropriate language (eg. they're using a public machine) can still select their favoured language.

Answer 2

• You should have internal linking anyway. What is a person wants to change language on the fly? Happens ;)

• Otherwise - no. Some not to stupid link managemnent for incoming links may be nice (otherwise they likely all end up linking to EN).

Answer 3

I am wondering if it is bad for SEO to do this since Googlebot will probably fall on 'fr' or 'en' but not both.

Since you don't know where a certain bot comes from and you have no guarantee that the bot location will never change, it may lead to confusion. If the bot will be seeing a different version now and then it may decide a page is too volatile for it to have high rankings. Anyway, only Google people could tell you what the implications are.

Also not do it this way that the url of the home page stays the same but the content is served in different languages. Each version should have its specific url and that should be fixed.

Would it be fixed if I add a link inside my page to the different language page.

It will help the localized urls to be discoverable and keep their rankings. Your initial home page may however have bad rankings or none at all since it will only be redirecting and to a random location each time.

Answer 4

There are several fall-back approaches when doing language negotiation or content negotiation in general. If no match is found, you could either send or redirect to the default choice or present a list of available choices. (See Common HTTP Implementation Problems – Guideline 9: Provide default and fall-back solutions)

I’m not sure if Google sends a list of preferred languages at all (and I rather doubt that). But in case of a missing language preference in the HTTP header and no other hint on the preferred language (i.e. in the URI), I would send a list of available choices. Then Google, other search engines, and even your human users can pick every language variant available.