Don't set the language of your website based on user location

Re:Don't set the language of your website based on user loca... by tduberne on Monday May 18, 2020 @04:16AM (#23219729)

There is worse: websites that redirect you to the homepage in your detected language, rather than the same page in "your" language if it exists, or the original if not.

I often have this problem with web shops with my wife, who has a different mother tongue: she sends me a link to eg. a piece of furniture she likes, and all I can see is the homepage of the bloody shop, with no clear way to just say "show me the damn page I asked for".

Another fun experience was a short text on an airline website (cannot remember which one) which ended being in 3 different languages, sometimes switching in the middle of a paragraph, depending on whether it was using the language of my location, my browser or my OS. At least that was fun.

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Re:Don't set the language of your website based on user loca... by woutr_be on Monday May 18, 2020 @06:46AM (#23220759)

Kind of unrelated, but I'm unable to shop on Amazon because of this. As soon as I click on an Amazon link anywhere on the web, it opens the mobile app and enters this weird redirection loop where it keeps asking me if I want to switch to my local Amazon store.

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Re:Don't set the language of your website based on user loca... by 5Qn8mNbc2FNCiVV on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @01:26PM (#23249447)

Uninstall the app?

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Re:Don't set the language of your website based on user loca... by furyg3 on Monday May 18, 2020 @04:35AM (#23219868)

Man this happens all the time, especially for products (which I kind of understand).

I was doing some research on camping equipment. Google leads me to a US page. But since I'm in NL, it redirects me to an NL domain, which is a totally different site. That site, of course, doesn't have that page, so I get dumped on their main homepage.

[ Parent | on HN ]