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A web rule is that the same URL shouldn't provide different contents, even the same thing in different languages. To do so, the locale should be in the URL. However, some websites ignore that rule, Youtube for instance. So I'd like to understand a few things about that:

  • Are there consequences if we ignore that rule for translation? (like SEO wise)
  • What does Youtube do to avoid these consequences?

To give a context, I don't really want to use different URLs, I'd rather use the header Accept-language header, or a user setting if it exists. I'm using Symfony.

Stephen Ostermiller
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Basically if the SEO is concerned then you should comply to googles understanding of the topic which is: TL;DR use different urls

Refer here: link to docs

I don’t think that YouTube cares about SEO anyway, so don’t bother to look at it.

  • I see, do you happen to know if the SEO impact of using the same url is big ? –  Nov 25 '20 at 18:39
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    You you find a way to indicate for google that the content is actually in different language it may be not so significant, but usually is not advisable. –  Nov 25 '20 at 18:42
  • Google will have problems crawling your site and will only index one language of your content if you use the same URL for multiple languages. – Stephen Ostermiller Nov 25 '20 at 21:08