Is it a problem (e.g. for Google) when my site has no root page?

Is it a problem (e.g. for Google) when my site has no root page? - If a page has internal and external outgoing links to redirecting URLs, it’s returning 3xx (301, 302, etc.) HTTP status codes standing for redirection. This issue means that the page does not exist on a permanent or temporary basis. It appears on most of the popular web browsers, usually caused by a misconfigured website. However, there are some steps you can take to ensure the issue isn’t on your side. You can find more details about redirecting URLs by reading the Google Search Central overview. In this article, we’ll go over how you can fix the Is it a problem (e.g. for Google) when my site has no root page? error on your web browser. Problem :

I have a multi-lingual site, which contains languages in this manner:

http://www.example.com/en/
http://www.example.com/de/
http://www.example.com/fr/

To avoid duplicate links, is it ok not to have the root (/) page?

I.e., the root 301 redirects to /en/:

$ curl -I http://www.example.com/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: /en/

Does Google mind, or should I mind? Does anyone?

Solution :

If the root (/) 301 redirect to /en/, Google will most probably consider your homepage is http://www.example.com/en/ and there is no problem not to have a root (/) page.

Regarding Google guidelines for multilingual sites, you can use this method to separate languages on your site.

From an SEO point of view, no, it's not a problem for your page to have no root. Search engine's index URLs, it doesn't matter if they're in subfolders or not.

However, from a user-experience point of view you really shouldn't assume that anybody who lands on the root of your site wants to see the English version. Let's say a Japanese user tells one of their friends about your great site at www.example.com and the Japanese user types it into their browser. They're then forwarded to an English version of your site, even though they can't read English. Most likely they will simply navigate away, and never think of your website again.

An appropriate solution would be to attempt to detect the browser's language server-side, and then redirect to the appropriate language. Failing that (if the language isn't set, or if there's multiple languages), make the root page something where the user is simply asked to choose their preferred language and then redirected to the appropriate homepage.

You probably wouldn't be hurt by simply redirecting to the English version, but your non-English speaking users will likely have a better experience if my method above is followed.

It depends on what sort of "no root page" you've got. My personal website originally returned "404" for / (and common variations such as /index.html or /index.php).

Google had no trouble finding things using inbound links to actual pages, but the Cuil crawler couldn't handle it: I'd see a request for whichever inbound link it was following, a request for /, and then nothing, and my site never showed up in their search results.

We hope that this article has helped you resolve the redirects, url, 301-redirect error in your web browsers. Enjoy browsing the internet uninterrupted!