Geo Pulse #50 — Setting language detection that doesn't annoy users

Geo Pulse #50 — Setting language detection that doesn't annoy users
Theme of the week: country ≠ language, and assuming so loses conversions.

The priority order for picking which language to show:

→ Priority 1 — An explicit user choice (URL path or saved cookie) always wins. Honor it.
→ Priority 2 — The Accept-Language browser header, not the IP country. A German tourist in Spain wants German.
→ Priority 3 — IP geolocation only as a last-resort default.
→ Never auto-redirect on language alone; offer a dismissible banner ('View in Spanish?') instead.
→ Handle multilingual countries explicitly — Canada (en/fr), Switzerland (de/fr/it), Belgium (nl/fr) need a real choice.
→ Persist the choice and expose a visible switcher on every page.

Reference: Google Search Central on locale-adaptive pages and the W3C's guidance on language negotiation. Header-first, IP-last.