1 web page 3 different address

[member22]

I have a website in 2 languages ( French and English ) and for the home page I have 3 different address

www.example.com
www.example.com/en
www.example.com/en/123.html

First question : which one out of the three should I keep

Then when I go on google and do a search for my company the main link www.example.com only appears in French wherever you are in the world and whatever browser language you are using ?

I would like to appear in English when the user does a search on google and uses an English browser and in French when the user uses a browser in French.

what should I do and where does that problem come from ?
Thanks,

[edited by: tedster at 1:05 am (utc) on May 22, 2008]
[edit reason] use example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

Your home page is almost always best served at the domain root - www.example.com.

In terms of getting one site to rank well in two languages - well, you're much better off using two domains, in my view. Next best is using a separate directory (or possibly subdomain) for each language.

There's been a lot of discussion here about multi-language and multi-country websites. You can find some of the best in the Hot Topics [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page. Look the the GEO-TARGETED SEARCH search section

[Silvery]

Are you using content negotiation, then? That is, when a user with a browser preference set for French comes to your site, they get the French version, and a browser set at default or English gets English?

[koan]

My preference is to choose the highest priority language at the root:

www.example.com/

and to use subdirectories for other languages:

www.example.com/fr/
www.example.com/es/
www.example.com/de/

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:48 am (utc) on May 23, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed typo [/edit]