Gary Illyes from Google mentioned on Mastodon this morning that you need to 301 redirect URLs when there’s a “close-to 1:1 match” for that URL. We all know that, however what he added was that is even true for when the “language of the content material does not match.”
Gary wrote, “301s are nice when you’ve gotten at the very least a close-to 1:1 match for the URL and also you need to consolidate them, maybe even when the language of the content material does not match. 404s for all the pieces else. However that may very well be simply me; I like deleting stuff.”
So you probably have an in depth 1:1 match on URL A and URL B, even when URL A is in French and URL B is in English, you possibly can 301 redirect them. I believe this typically occurs if you resolve to tug out of a area and not must translate particular pages.
In the event you consider how localization works and hreflang works, this recommendation from Gary is sensible. I imply, hreflang is not a rating factor, Google mentioned quite a few instances. It simply helps Google perceive that this web page in English is identical web page as this French web page however simply in a distinct language.
So it might make sense to 301 redirect these pages even when they aren’t in the identical language if these pages are going away.
Discussion board dialogue at Mastodon.
