Are there advantages of using hard coded URLs for localization?

Posted by nbolton on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by nbolton
Published on 2012-03-23T18:15:38Z Indexed on 2012/03/23 23:40 UTC
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language

On the Synergy website, localization is detected (and can be overridden) but uses the same URL for all languages.

Some websites however, like Wikipedia have language specific subdomains. What are the advantages of having either subdomains or subdirectories (i.e. a specific URL) for each language localization? Also, should it automatically redirect the user to the specific subdomain/subdir based on the language that the browser requests?

I suspect that there are advantages, which I'm guessing are:

When the website appears in search results for non-English languages, the translated page description will be shown (assuming there is a translation provided by the website).
When a user shares a page (e.g. through twitter), it will show in a specific language. Perhaps this is a disadvantage though?

Am I correct, if so, are there more advantages?

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