HTTP Status code for language redirect

Question

I wonder which HTTP Status code I should have to send in language redirects.

I have the following php code to redirect via HTTP headers to most important language in

Answer 1

You could serve every language under the same url and then use content-negotiation of the Accept-Language header, but I wouldn't recommend that.

I would rather suggest that on your web sites root url, you issue a redirect (303 - See Other) to a language sub page (E.g. /en). When you do that, respond with a Vary header, that specifies Accept-Language (And any other relevant headers, such as Cookie). That way, any intermediaries (proxies, caches) will be able to cache the response. I would specifically not issue a 301, since you still want links to point to the root url. On the language-specific page, I would put a rel="canonical" to the root url.

See also these threads:

• How does Google treat HTTP response 303?
• Canonical URLs and Content Negotiation