Internationalization and Search Engine Optimization

[surveytool]

I'd like to internationalize my site such that it's accessible in many languages. The language setting will be detected in the request data automatically, and can be overridden in the user's settings / stored in the session.

My question pertains to how I should display the various versions of the same page based upon language in terms of the pages' URL's. Let's say we're just looking at the index page of http://www.exampledotcom/, which defaults to English. Now if a French-speaker loads the index page, should I simply keep the URL as http://www.exampledotcom/, or should I have it redirect to http://www.exampledotcom/fr/?

I'm trying to figure out what benefits or consequences this has in terms of SEO. I don't want the French version of the site showing up in google.com if it prevents the English version of the same pages from showing up there, but I would like it to show up in google.fr.

[jimbobo2779]

While I'm not sure how it relates to No Hands SEO I would say that it would probably be best to have the French version redirect to http://domain.com/fr/ or even have it on a separate subdomain http://fr.domain.com/

This way you are not confusing any of the search engines with delivering unexpected language content to the user / search engine. It could also mean that you have completely independent rankings in different search engines. Personally I would probably go the subdomain route for ranking purposes but that is a preference and doesn't mean that a subdomain IS the best.