Hreflang & International SEO Background
Following the release of Google’s Panda algorithm in early 2011 international brands with multilingual and multinational websites have faced major challenges dealing with duplicated content served to different locales. With the Panda algorithm specifically targeting ‘thin’ or duplicate copy multinational sites were exposed to potential Panda penalties.
To address this Google originally suggested the combined use of hreflang and the rel=canonical tag.
In short, the hreflang element enables Google to index and serve the localised version of your content to users who require an alternate language version. As an agency we have successfully implemented a combination of the hreflang annotation and rel=canonical tag across a range of international sites to ensure users are served the correct content for their location. In most circumstances we have implemented this on sites which have very similar content in a single language with regional variations (e.g. Australia, USA and UK).
In recent months, following general confusion over the correct implementation of rel=canonical Google no longer recommends using rel=canonical alongside hreflang:
This appears to have stemmed from webmasters implementing hreflang and rel=canonical without prior knowledge of the full implications. In particular if the two were implemented across different languages then pages often appeared as an amalgamation of the languages.
Additionally recent research into the effectiveness of the two elements has indicated that you should only combine the hreflang element with the canonical element if your site has problems with duplicate content. In Google Webmaster Help forums Google has recently stated that you can still use the rel=canonical, however you should fully understand the implications before deployment. If you do not have problems with duplicate content, then you should implement the hreflang attribute alone.
Introducing “x default hreflang”
Last week Google announced their support of the “x default hreflang” annotation – designed to assist with the communication of redirects and languages for the homepages of multilingual and multinational websites. This new hreflang annotation has been created specifically to work with sites that are configured to point visitors to local pages, either via redirects or by changing the content to the user’s language.
Essentially the hreflang annotation takes the functionality of hreflang to the next level by enabling webmasters to communicate the redirect or language changes to Googlebot. This markup can be added to either the sitemap or HTML link tags in the site’s source code.
Google has provided an example of this in action for a website with content targeting users around the world:
http://example.com/en-gb: For English-speaking users in the UK
http://example.com/en-us: For English-speaking users in the USA
http://example.com/en-au: For English-speaking users in Australia
http://example.com/: The homepage shows users a country selector and is the default page for users worldwide
In this situation you would include the following annotations on the above pages:
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-gb” hreflang=”en-gb” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-us” hreflang=”en-us” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/en-au” hreflang=”en-au” />
<link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/” hreflang=”x-default” />
In the above example the new “x default hreflang” attribute informs Google that the http://example.com/ page doesn’t target any specific location or language and should be served up as the default page when no other page is relevant.
In summary, the implementation of the new “x – default hreflang” annotation should go some way towards ensuring that users of your site are being served the correct content which is relevant to the locale that they are residing in.
