title: HTTP status code 406 appropriate for "Content not available in your country"? If not, what's appropriate?
body: <p>I have a multilingual website. The content language is defined via the URL:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>www.example.com/en_gb/content/right/here/</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>To make sure search engines understand that the content is also available in other languages, I make use of the alternate links in my page's <code>&lt;head/&gt;</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;link href="http://www.example.com/en_au/content/right/here/" hreflang="en-AU" rel="alternate"&gt;
  &lt;link href="http://www.example.com/fr_be/content/right/here/" hreflang="fr-BE" rel="alternate"&gt;
  &lt;link href="http://www.example.com/nl_be/content/right/here/" hreflang="nl-BE" rel="alternate"&gt;
  &lt;link href="http://www.example.com/en_ca/content/right/here/" hreflang="en-CA" rel="alternate"&gt;
  &lt;link href="http://www.example.com/fr_ca/content/right/here/" hreflang="fr-CA" rel="alternate"&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now my question: What shall I do in case someone requests the page with a valid locale (a local that is usually supported by my website),  but the current page is not available for that locale?</p>
  
  <p>Currently I write to the page "This content is not available for your country" and respond with <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.5" rel="nofollow">HTTP status code 404 Not Found</a> to make sure search engines don't index this page.</p>
  
  <p>Could I also make use of the <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.4.7" rel="nofollow">HTTP status code 406 Not Acceptable</a> to make sure search engines understand even better that this page is also available in other languages? Would that status code even be appropriate? If so, how would I respond with the alternate links while at the same time showing a page to my users? This is what the RFC says:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Unless it was a HEAD request, the response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of available entity characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>