Should forwarding from the main domain to the language be permanent?
We build many websites with multiple languages. The urls look like this:
- example.com/en/
- example.com/de/
If a user accesses the main domain example.com, our application detects / guesses the user's language and redirects it to one of the above URLs.
So far we have used Temporary Redirect (302) , since the user can come back with different language settings and then must be redirected to another. But this will make the search engine robots not miss a single link juice (power rating).
It is wrong to do a permanent redirect (301), but maybe it should be?
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EDIT: Found another question that advises using 307. But the answer from google would be nice: P
Perhaps I found the correct redirect code myself:
In this case, the request must be repeated with a different URI; however, future requests should still use the original URI. Unlike how 302 has historically been implemented, the request method cannot be changed when the original request is reissued. For example, a POST request must be retried using another POST request.
Other opinions?
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I recommend changing the url structure. I've always put the main language at the root of the site - example.com. I add all additional languages to split urls like example.com/fr. You can use different domains, subdomains, folders, or even query parameters (the latter is not recommended). You can read what Google has to say about this . Use hreflang in situations like this.
Matt Cuts explains how geo targeting affects your SEO .
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For language / country selectors or home page auto-redirects, you must add an annotation for the "x-default" hreflang value in your Hreflang or Hreflang sitemaps.
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-default" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ie" hreflang="en-ie" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-ca" hreflang="en-ca" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-au" hreflang="en-au" />
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en" hreflang="en" />
Google Webmaster Help: Use hreflang for language and regional URLs
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