Introducing "x-default hreflang" for international landing pages
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Wednesday, April 10, 2013
The home pages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors
to localized pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to reflect the user's
language. Today we'll introduce a new rel-alternate-hreflang annotation that you can
use to specify such home pages that is supported by both Google and
Yandex.
To see this in action, let's look at an example. The website example.com has content that targets
users around the world as follows:
https://example.com/en-gb: For English-speaking users in the UK
https://example.com/en-us: For English-speaking users in the USA
https://example.com/en-au: For English-speaking users in Australia
https://example.com/: The home page shows users a country selector and is the
default page for users worldwide
In this case, you can annotate this cluster of pages using
rel-alternate-hreflang
using sitemaps or using HTML
link tags like this:
The new x-defaulthreflang attribute value signals to
our algorithms that this page doesn't target any specific language or locale and is the default
page when no other page is better suited. For example, it would be the page our algorithms try to
show French-speaking searchers worldwide or English-speaking searchers on google.ca.
The same annotation applies for home pages that dynamically alter their contents based on a user's
perceived geolocation or the Accept-Language headers. The x-defaulthreflang value signals to our algorithms that such a page doesn't target a specific
language or locale.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle and Yandex now support a new \u003ccode\u003erel-alternate-hreflang\u003c/code\u003e annotation to specify localized home pages for multinational and multilingual websites.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003ex-default\u003c/code\u003e hreflang attribute value indicates a default page that doesn't target a specific language or locale, used when no other page is better suited for a user.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebsite owners can use sitemaps or HTML link tags with \u003ccode\u003erel-alternate-hreflang\u003c/code\u003e to annotate clusters of localized pages and their default page.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThis annotation also applies to home pages that dynamically change content based on user geolocation or \u003ccode\u003eAccept-Language\u003c/code\u003e headers.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Multilingual websites can use `rel-alternate-hreflang` annotations to direct visitors to localized pages. A new `x-default` `hreflang` attribute value designates a default home page that doesn't target a specific language or location. This is useful for pages with country selectors or dynamically changing content. Annotations can be implemented using sitemaps or HTML `link` tags. For instance, `example.com` uses this method to show content to UK, USA, and Australian users.\n"],null,["# Introducing \"x-default hreflang\" for international landing pages\n\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore). Read the up-to-date [documentation about localization](/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions).\n\nWednesday, April 10, 2013\n\n\nThe home pages of multinational and multilingual websites are sometimes configured to point visitors\nto localized pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to reflect the user's\nlanguage. Today we'll introduce a new `rel-alternate-hreflang` annotation that you can\nuse to specify such home pages that is supported by both Google and\n[Yandex](https://webmaster.ya.ru/replies.xml?item_no=15326).\n\n\nTo see this in action, let's look at an example. The website example.com has content that targets\nusers around the world as follows: \n\n- `https://example.com/en-gb`: For English-speaking users in the UK\n- `https://example.com/en-us`: For English-speaking users in the USA\n- `https://example.com/en-au`: For English-speaking users in Australia\n- `https://example.com/`: The home page shows users a country selector and is the default page for users worldwide\n\n\nIn this case, you can annotate this cluster of pages using\n[`rel-alternate-hreflang`](/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions)\nusing [sitemaps](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview) or using HTML\n`link` tags like this: \n\n```\n\u003clink rel=\"alternate\" href=\"https://example.com/en-gb\" hreflang=\"en-gb\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"alternate\" href=\"https://example.com/en-us\" hreflang=\"en-us\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"alternate\" href=\"https://example.com/en-au\" hreflang=\"en-au\" /\u003e\n\u003clink rel=\"alternate\" href=\"https://example.com/\" hreflang=\"x-default\" /\u003e\n```\n\n\nThe new **`x-default` `hreflang` attribute value** signals to\nour algorithms that this page doesn't target any specific language or locale and is the default\npage when no other page is better suited. For example, it would be the page our algorithms try to\nshow French-speaking searchers worldwide or English-speaking searchers on google.ca.\n\n\nThe same annotation applies for home pages that dynamically alter their contents based on a user's\nperceived geolocation or the `Accept-Language` headers. The `x-default`\n`hreflang` value signals to our algorithms that such a page doesn't target a specific\nlanguage or locale.\n\n\nAs always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the\n[Internationalization Webmaster Help Forum](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community/).\n\n\nPosted by\n[Pierre Far](/search/blog/authors/pierre-far),\nWebmaster Trends Analyst"]]
