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.
Language Detection redirect: 301 or 302?
-
We have a site offering a voip app in 4 languages. Users are currently 302 redirected from the root page to /language subpages, depending on their browser language.
Discussions about the sense of this aside: Is it correct to use a 302 redirect here or should users be 301 redirected to their respective languages? I don't find any guideline on this whatsoever...
-
My pleasure!
-
Hi Marcus
Thanks for your great answer! This makes a lot of sense and I agree that 303 seems to be the suitable response if they were used "semantically"...
I do not agree with the general setup they made with this user detection (particularly since the root URL is not accessible but gets redirected). So I'm just out for a quick fix here for something that is not set up optimally in general.
I think I will stick with the 302 - it's not so easy to decide, but in such cases I think what Google itself does is a good reference. So thanks for pointing that out!
We won't get link juice from the domain's root using 302s (or less), but I will try to solve this otherwise by actually making that URL accessible.
Thanks a lot!
-
Hey Philipp
Okay, SEO aside here and assuming folks are landing on your site and not on the section of the site that is targeted to their location / language (which is a whole other discussion but not your question as far as I can tell) then you want to redirect these users to the correct language pages.
So, we have two options here:
- HTTP 301 - Moved Permanently: Now I don't feel this is correct. The resource has not moved, it is just not correct for this user based on their language preference.
- HTTP 302 - Found: This is used to indicate the resource has temporarily moved to another location so is maybe more suitable as results from page A will not be completely ignored
In fact, if you dig into the HTTP status codes documentation a better option here would seemingly be a 303 which is classified as 'The response to the request can be found under another URI' and for my money that is more suitable. But, problem is, no one seems to use the 303 redirect and everyone seems to use the 302 in it's place.
So, I ask myself, what does Google do? When I visit www.google.com from the UK I am always redirected to the www.google.co.uk site. Is this a 301, 302, 303 or something else entirely? So, I checked quickly in webbug (or you can do it Chrome by looking at the Network tab in Tools > Developer Tools > Network Tab) and it redirects with a 302 status code.
Request: HEAD / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
Connection: close
Accept: /
User-Agent: WebBug/5.0Response: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: http://www.google.co.uk/So, I am not sure there is a definitive answer as from a search engine perspective we would want to folks landing on the right page due to our geo location and language targeting but that does not escape the need to show people the content in the correct language.
If this was me and I was dead set on a redirection I would go with a 302. I can't claim that is an authoritative answer but it is certainly my opinion based on my research here.
I guess the alternative would be to maybe detect the users language settings and load a pop up that then allows them to select and redirect so it is not done at the request / response level but rather a choice the user makes themselves (then maybe cookies or other options could be used to deal with language for those users on subsequent visits). In the UK http://www.babycenter.com/ does this and it pops up asking me which version of the site I would like to visit (choice is always a good thing).
Possibly a good question to ask in the Google Webmaster Help Forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters as you will often get a Googler pop up to answer specific questions or this question may well have been asked before (albeit in a different way). If this is not search focused then really it comes down to what you think works best for your users.
Hope that helps!
MarcusSome further reading if it helps:
- http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192
- http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399
- http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_302
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
301 Redirects to relative URLs not absolute a problem?
Hi we recently did a migration and a lot of content changed locations see: https://d.pr/i/RvqI81 Basically, the 301 goes to the correct location but its a relative URL (as you can see from the screenshot) rather than absolute URL. Do you think this is a high priority issue from an SEO standpoint, should we get the developer to change the redirects to absolute? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
How to handle potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following a major site replacement
We are looking for the very best way of handling potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
a major site replacement and I mean total replacement. Things you should know
Existing domain has 17 years history with Google but rankings have suffered over the past year and yes we know why. (and the bitch is we paid a good sized SEO company for that ineffective and destructive work)
The URL structure of the new site is completely different and SEO friendly URL's rule. This means that there will be many thousands of historical URL's (mainly dynamic ones) that will attract 404 errors as they will not exist anymore. Most are product profile pages and the God Google has indexed them all. There are also many links to them out there.
The new site is fully SEO optimised and is passing all tests so far - however there is a way to go yet. So here are my thoughts on the possible ways of meeting our need,
1: Create 301 redirects for each an every page in the .htaccess file that would be one huge .htaccess file 50,000 lines plus - I am worried about effect on site speed.
2: Create 301 redirects for each and every unused folder, and wildcard the file names, this would be a single redirect for each file in each folder to a single redirect page
so the 404 issue is overcome but the user doesn't open the precise page they are after.
3: Write some code to create a hard copy 301 index.php file for each and every folder that is to be replaced.
4: Write code to create a hard copy 301 .php file for each and every page that is to be replaced.
5: We could just let the pages all die and list them with Google to advise of their death.
6: We could have the redirect managed by a database rather than .htaccess or single redirect files. Probably the most challenging thing will be to load the data in the first place, but I assume this could be done programatically - especially if the new URL can be inferred from the old. Many be I am missing another, simpler approach - please discuss0 -
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes. Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)? We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
303 redirect
Hi, 303 redirect is a good thing or not ? I have a homepage in 2 languages FR and EN > mywebsite.com/fr/ and mywebsite.com/en/. A 303 redirect is on mywebsite.com to mywebsite.com/fr/. Thanks D.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks
Hello... One of my sites is losing rankings in G. I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links... My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain? If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over? How about the good backlinks? Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Can penalties be passed via 301 redirect?
I have a well established domain that's been hit with some penalties. It hasn't been nuked off the map, just downgraded, especially on short-tail, one word type queries. I'm planning on redirecting this domain to another well established domain. The domains already have a history of lots of interlinking and are very similar from a subject matter standpoint. I feel that the penalized domain has been hit with an "over-optimization" of link anchor text penalty (I'm hoping it's algorithmic, but it could be manual). My question is if anyone has ever heard of a penalty like this being transferred to another domain through a 301 redirect. My hope is that the penalty just puts a cap on how much juice the redirect can pass, rather than transferring the penalty to the other domain itself. Any thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOMG1 -
How do I go about changing a 302 redirect to a 301.
Hello Friends! Thanks for viewing my question. Ok,My question today is How do I go about redirecting a 302 link to a 301 link. I understand the benefits of doing this as far as link juice and how the Search Engines views the two Re-Directs. I am wanting to know where I would start to do this. Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0