Gary Illyes from Google mentioned on Mastodon this morning that it’s best 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 got no less than a close-to 1:1 match for the URL and also you wish to consolidate them, maybe even when the language of the content material does not match. 404s for every part else. However that could possibly 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 determine to tug out of a area and now not must translate particular pages.
In the event you consider how localization works and hreflang works, this recommendation from Gary is smart. I imply, hreflang is not a rating factor, Google mentioned quite a few occasions. It simply helps Google perceive that this web page in English is identical web page as this French web page however simply in a unique 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.
