3 replies to this topic

[steveyates]

A quick question as I couldn't find the topic covered in the forum

I have a couple of sites that are bilingual (English + French) so there is a php script on the index page that detects the user's language and redirects to a French user to the French pages and everyone else to the English pages. There is no other text on the index page. How will this affect my search rankings ? Should I think about adding some text in purely for the Search bots ?

I am asking the question as I just checked the index using"Fetch as Googlebot" and realised there was nothing there

TIA

Steve

[chrishirst]

assuming you only redirect the once, just build links to the French pages and the English pages, it's only the "experts" who think all links should point to the "home" page and EVERYBODY should look at it.

By targeting individual page you can use French and English for the anchor text as well.

[steveyates]

Thanks Chris

Can I assume that the redirect function will not cause a problem for the bots as all pages in both languages are listed in the sitemap file ?

[chrishirst]

No idea. It all depends on what criteria the redirect is triggered by.