Google Translate Belgium
If you have multiple language versions of a URL, each language page should identify different language versions, including itself. For example, if your site provides content in French, English, and Spanish, the Spanish version must include a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link for itself in addition to links to the French and English versions. Similarly, the English and French versions must each include the same references to the French, English, and Spanish versions.
You can specify multi-language URLs in the same domain as a given URL, or use URLs from a different domain.
If you need to decrease the number of bidirectional links in your site for ease of deployment, maintenance, or migration (for example, your site supports 40 languages and your newly-created Spanish pages will be migrating from HTTP to HTTPS), it is important to bidirectionally link newly expanded language pages to the originating/dominant language(s). For example, if your site was originally created in French with URLs on .fr, it's more important to bidirectionally link newer Mexican (.mx) and Spanish (.es) pages to your strong .fr presence, rather than to bidirectionally link your new Spanish language variant pages (.mx and .es) to each other.
It's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users if you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language, but in different locales. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en) page, and everyone else to see the homepage. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK. You can annotate this cluster of pages using a Sitemap file or using HTML link tags like this:
For language/country selectors or auto-redirecting homepages, you should add an annotation for the hreflang value "x-default" as well:Supported language values
The value of the hreflang attribute identifies the language (in ISO 639-1 format) and optionally the region (in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format) of an alternate URL. For example:
- de: German content, independent of region
- en-GB: English content, for GB users
- de-ES: German content, for users in Spain
Do not specify a country code by itself! Google does not automatically derive the language from the country code. You can specify a language code by itself if you want to simplify your tagging. Adding the country code after the language to restrict the page to a specific region. Examples:
- be: Belarusian language, independent of region (not Belgium French)
- nl-be: Dutch for Belgium
- fr-be: French for Belgium
For language script variations, the proper script is derived from the country. For example, when using zh-TW for users zh-TW, the language script is automatically derived (in this example: Chinese-Traditional). You can also specify the script itself explicitly using ISO 15924, like this:
- zh-Hant: Chinese (Traditional)
- zh-Hans: Chinese (Simplified)
Alternatively, you can also specify a combination of script and region—for example, use zh-Hans-TW to specify Chinese (Simplified) for Taiwanese users.
Finally, the reserved value "x-default" is used for indicating language selectors/redirectors which are not specific to one language or region, e.g. your homepage showing a clickable map of the world.
Common Mistakes
Important: Make sure that your provided hreflang value is actually valid. Take special care in regard to the two most common mistakes:
- Missing confirmation links: If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A. If this is not the case for all pages that use hreflang annotations, those annotations may be ignored or not interpreted correctly.
- Incorrect language codes: Make sure that all language codes you use identify the language (in ISO 639-1 format) and optionally the region (in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format) of an alternate URL. Specifying the region alone is not valid.
Example Widgets, Inc has a website that serves users in the USA, Great Britain, and Germany. The following URLs contain substantially the same content, but with regional variations:
- Default page that doesn't target any language or locale; may have selectors to let users pick their language and region.
- English-language homepage. Contains information about fees for shipping internationally from the USA.
- English-language; displays prices in pounds sterling.
- English-language; displays prices in US dollars.
- German-language version of the content
rel="alternate" hreflang="x" is used as a page level, not a site level, and you need to mark up each set of pages, including the home page, as appropriate. You can specify as many content variations and language/regional clusters as you need.
