What is the best place to display the language in your URL?

Question

I have a multi-language website that makes use of pretty URLs, so called search-engine-friendly URLs.

Now there are a few places to define the language in the URL:

1. • www.example.com/en/articles/random
   • www.example.com/nl/articles/random
2. • en.example.com/articles/random
   • nl.example.com/articles/random
3. • www.example.com/articles/random?lang=en
   • www.example.com/articles/random?lang=nl

Is there any preferred way of showing this, or is there another better way that I did not include?

Answer 1

I'll tell you what is NOT best practice - using parameters (3rd one). Making users type a complicated URL is asking for trouble.

Your pages can internally use GET parameters to find the lang, but use a URL rewrite module available in your web server to make it simple such as the 1st one - www.mydomain.com/en/articles/random

Even the second one is okay, except most users type domain name and hit Ctrl + Enter.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

http://www.apple.com/in/

Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple are in three different corners of the software development world, in terms of.. well.. everything. Sometimes I tend to think that those three big guys do stuff just to disagree with each other. But if they are following a common practice, it must make sense...