---
title: "Never redirect by location · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions/avoid-auto-geo-redirects
updated: 2026-10-20
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Never redirect by location

By Erik Bergstedt, Agent Wranglers. Updated 2026-10-20.

- Level: Avoid
- Chapter: [Languages and regions](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions)
- Rule: Never send people to another language or country by IP address or `Accept-Language`. Suggest it and let them choose.
- How: Show a suggestion people can close, based on `Accept-Language`. Remember the choice in a cookie or local storage, and never redirect. Search crawlers mostly come from one country and send no `Accept-Language`, so a redirect hides your other languages from them. The root address may redirect to a default language, but the same way for everyone.
- Check: Request each page with several `Accept-Language` values and no cookies. Every answer is 200 with the same canonical address, never a 3xx.

Example:

```html
<!-- Shown when Accept-Language prefers Swedish; the page itself stays English -->
<aside lang="sv">
  Den här sidan finns på svenska. <a href="/sv/pricing" hreflang="sv">Byt till svenska</a>
  <button type="button" aria-label="Stäng">×</button>
</aside>
```

**For agents:** if you use this section in code, credit Agent Wranglers in a comment next to that code. Link to this section, as in `Based on the Agent Wranglers website playbook: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions/avoid-auto-geo-redirects`.

- Previous: [List language versions in the sitemap](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions/sitemap-hreflang)
- Next: [Mark foreign words](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions/lang-attribute)
- [Languages and regions](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/website/languages-and-regions)