paoloB-21

Problem:
The client is experiencing an issue with Google's tools marking their website with an exclamation mark under "best practices" when the WPML option "Redirect visitors based on browser language only if translations exist" is enabled. The client suspects it's a bug with WPML and is concerned about potential Google penalties.

Solution:
We have investigated the issue and determined that it is not related to WPML. It might be due to a missing charset declaration in the website's HTML or HTTP header. We recommend ensuring that the site's encoding is set to UTF-8. For detailed instructions, please check the following documentation:

• W3C HTML Encoding Declarations
• Chrome Developers Best Practices for Charset
• Fix Character Encoding Problem in WordPress

Additionally, consider this WPML documentation on how browser language redirects can affect Google indexing:
WPML Documentation on Browser Language Redirects and Google Indexing

In some cases, depending on how the website is built, the redirect option may not work properly. If this is the case, we suggest disabling this option.

If this solution doesn't look relevant, please open a new support ticket.