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It appears that Google strongly recommends providing a separate URL for content that's fitted to a user's locale:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-locale-aware-geo-language-pages-19780.html

However, if you look at a site like YouTube, You can see that content (ie: the recommended videos) changes according to locale without a change in the URL.

Is YouTube not following Google's advice here? Or is the situation different since they only change the recommended videos without actually changing the content of the page (eg: the text and layout)?

I have a similar situation with a marketplace website where I'd like to change the recommended products according to the locale (locale is very relevant for the recommendations for my specific case) using the accept-language header. The general layout of the page and the text is no different, but the recommended products shown (including their captions and pictures) will vary. I wasn't planning on changing the URL for the page though. Should I?

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  • Googlebot doesn't utilize the Accept-Language header. If the main content is the same, don't sweat it.
    – Warren Halderman
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 10:55
  • I see. And if it did, would what I'm doing be considered bad practice? Is it best to have a separate url if I match certain things like recommended products to the locale in the accept-language header? Or is it ok if the same URL shows different recommendations?
    – theyuv
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 11:21
  • Youtube doesn't rely on SEO traffic the way that your site needs to. Many of Google's sites don't use best SEO practices because they don't need to. Do what is best for your site. Don't assume that what is best for Google's sites is also best for your own site.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 11:33
  • @StephenOstermiller Right, that makes sense. Given the situation I've described, in terms of SEO, should I make an effort to make separate URLs for the pages even though they're only changing the "recommendations" displayed?
    – theyuv
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 11:54
  • @WarrenHalderman Thanks. But then its possible that Google will reference some content in its snippet that won't actually be present when the user clicks through to the site. Which would be bad user experience, no? I wrote a similar question about this here: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/127116/…
    – theyuv
    Commented Jan 9, 2020 at 14:03

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