Costco's website shows in French primarily due to automatic language detection based on your IP address or browser language preferences. If you're visiting from a Canadian IP, especially from Quebec, the site often defaults to French to comply with Quebec's language laws and serve its francophone customer base. Quebec's Bill 96, which strengthened the Charter of the French Language in 2022, requires businesses operating in Quebec to make their websites available in French, and French must be prominent or default. Costco and other major retailers serving Quebec customers typically set French as the default for visitors from that province. Even if you're in Ontario or elsewhere in Canada, your browser's language settings or a previously selected preference cookie can trigger the French version. You can usually switch to English by looking for a language toggle in the header or footer of the site. On Costco.ca, this is typically a small "EN" or "English" link in the top-right corner. Once you select English, the site should remember your preference through a browser cookie, though clearing cookies or using incognito mode will reset it. From a technical standpoint, Ottawa SEO implements similar geo-detection for clients serving bilingual markets. We use hreflang tags, language-specific subdirectories, and server-side detection to serve the right language while avoiding duplicate content penalties. The challenge is balancing legal compliance, user preference, and SEO performance. For Quebec-focused businesses, French must be default and at least equal prominence to English. For national Canadian brands like Costco, the safe approach is geo-detecting Quebec IPs to French and other provinces to English, with clear toggle options. If you're consistently seeing French outside Quebec and don't want it, check your browser language settings under preferences. Costco reads the Accept-Language header your browser sends, so if French is listed first, that's what you'll get regardless of your actual location.